A tale of one city: Dickens and London

In 2012 we are celebrating Dickens' bicentenary. This great author is a creator of so many famous and beloved characters as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield to Pip, Miss Havisham and Magwitch. Every schoolchild reads his stories with amazement. It was the author who manages to combine difficult realities and light humor in the best traditions. But among all his characters there was the one, that took the leading position, that triggered Dickens’ imagination and inspired him – London. London is a central character of many author’s stories. Let’s learn, why Dickens and London were so inseparable.

Dickens in London

Dickens came to London when he was a child, but his family ran into financial troubles, so his life was very difficult. His father got to debtors’ prison and Dickens had to work in a shoe polish factory to support his mother and his brother. At that time he was only 12. Today there is a Charles Dickens Museum in the same house where Dickens’ family lived. Visitors can see authentic furniture, pencils, pens, letters and other writer’s items. Museum is going to be closed in 2012 until Christmas for reconstruction project that costs 3.1 million.

Another Dickens’ place in London is All The Year Round on Wellington Street. It times of writer’s popularity crowds gathered there to wait the latest episode. Today, there is a coffee house on the ground floor.

“Dickens is buried in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, alongside other literary greats including Geoffrey Chaucer, Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Hardy.”

London in Dickens

Dickens specialist say that there are only few locations left in London that were described in author’s stories. But many travelers still can imagine that the line of the stories happened directly on the same place. Covent Garden that is mentioned in “Oliver Twist” and “The Pickwick Papers” that days was a proper working market, not a shopping center as it is today. Bow Street Magistrates' Court was mentioned in “Oliver Twist” and “Barnaby Rudge.” Lincoln's Inn and Chancery Lane both feature heavily in "Bleak House”. The tranquil square at historic Staple Inn, Holborn, is mentioned in Dickens' final, unfinished novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." “The bells of the clock tower in St Dunstan-in-the-West Church, Fleet Street, are the ones which wake Scrooge to his new life at the end of "A Christmas Carol."

But pubs and taverns that were mentions in Dickens’ stories and letters are still serving today. Visiting London, don’t forget to order excursion round “Dickens’ city” and see all those places that you managed to love in his books.