8london locations linked to dickens

As the 19th century reached its final decades, Victorians became increasingly fascinated with the history of London. Charles Dickens’s work played a huge part in this, as people embraced the idea that the capital might contain hidden historic gems, including locations featured in the writer’s novels – places that once upon a time would not have been considered of note.

According to Dr Lee Jackson, Dickensian tourism was also different from the literary tourism previously associated with the Lake District and William Wordsworth or Scotland and Walter Scott in that it didn’t really occur during the writer’s own lifetime.

After Dickens’s death in 1870, Victorians began looking beyond palaces and castles, and took an interest in the smaller places: pubs, houses and locales that didn’t even necessarily have famous names attached to them.

“Dickensian London was the back alley, it was the local pub,” explains Jackson. “And people started to see them in a different way. There was a heritage boom at the end of the 19th century, and Dickens tourism figures in that.”

The Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street, the London home of Charles Dickens from 1837–39, is undoubtedly the best place to start for any fans who want to explore his life and work through London landmarks. But there are plenty of other sites that have stories to tell.

Here, Jackson tells us about eight London locations that became – for better or worse – Dickensian tourism hotspots...

13 JOHNSON STREET, CAMDEN

In 1824, the author’s father, John Dickens, was imprisoned for debt. After three months, he got out of gaol thanks to receiving an inheritance when his mother died – a “very Dickensian turn of events,” notes Jackson.

The family then moved to Camden, which was just on the outer limits of north London at the time, to a road called Johnson Street. Charles Dickens subsequently lived there with his family from 1824, when he was 12 years old, to around 1829 or 1830.

“It was a little terraced house,