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Blue plaque commemorating the home of English author and social critic Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Image courtesy of The Charles Dickens Museum.

London’s Dickens Museum reopens after makeover

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
Blue plaque commemorating the home of English author and social critic Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Image courtesy of The Charles Dickens Museum.
Blue plaque commemorating the home of English author and social critic Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Image courtesy of The Charles Dickens Museum.

LONDON (AP) – Charles Dickens’ London home has gone from Bleak House to Great Expectations.

For years, the four-story brick row house where the author lived with his young family was a dusty and slightly neglected museum. It was a mecca for Dickens scholars, but overlooked by most visitors to London.

Now, after a 3-million-pound ($4.8-million) refurbishment, it has been gleamingly restored to bring the writer’s world to life. Visitors can tour the rooms where Dickens lived between 1837 and 1839, and where he wrote “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Oliver Twist.”

The museum’s director said Wednesday that it aims to look “as if Dickens had just stepped out.”

The Dickens Museum reopened to the public Monday and hopes to draw 45,000 visitors a year, a 50 percent rise on pre-refurbishment levels.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

Blue plaque commemorating the home of English author and social critic Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Image courtesy of The Charles Dickens Museum.
Blue plaque commemorating the home of English author and social critic Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Image courtesy of The Charles Dickens Museum.
The Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty St., in the London borough of Camden, occupies the Georgian terraced house where Dickens lived from March 25, 1837 through December of 1839. Photo by Jack1956.
The Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty St., in the London borough of Camden, occupies the Georgian terraced house where Dickens lived from March 25, 1837 through December of 1839. Photo by Jack1956.