Charles Dickens Museum

Amanda at Fig and Thistle is hosting a Charles Dickens Month leading up to the 200th anniversary of his birth in February. Each Tuesday participants will post something about Dickens, and we’ll celebrate together!

That’s me making my sad face at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. I had planned to kick off my 30th birthday with a visit, but alas, when we go there, it was closed for renovation. I had checked their website during my planning, but they didn’t have anything about the renovation on there at that time, and sadly, it wasn’t scheduled to reopen until the day after we’d be back in Oklahoma. Sigh.

I’m afraid Ryan thought I was about to throw a temper tantrum like a 2-year-old, but I managed to hold it together. At least I got to see the outside of the house and walked up and down the street he lived on. It’s crazy to me that normal people live next door. How cool is that? I’d love to live next door to where Dickens lived! Can you imagine reading A Christmas Carol, curled up by the fire and knowing the man who wrote it lives next door? That’s crazy!

And it was really a beautiful street. It’s very traditional London, or how I pictured residential London anyway. Gorgeous row houses, trees, in a quiet part of town, bookstores and cute restaurants nearby. This is where I would want to live if I moved to London.

Plus, it’s close to Persephone Books! That was the next stop on my birthday, and not being able to spend hours in the museum did give me more time there and at the string of bookshops we went in on Charing Cross road that day. Everyone who has seen my London photos have been a little confused by the ecstatic photo of me in Persephone Books, so I thought it would be nice to share with my fellow bloggers since most of the book blogging world is slightly obsessed. And, one of the books I got was in fact by a Dickens – I got The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens, Dickens’ great-granddaughter. It has a quite lovely bookmark and endpapers.

The store was quaint and cozy and overflowing with the beautiful grey books. I had such as hard time making my selections, but fortunately Ryan is a good sport. And he carried the books while we continue our shopping at Foyle’s later. He’s a keeper. And we’ll make it back to the Charles Dickens Museum someday!