Charles Dickens Museum to reopen with National Lottery funding

Charles Dickens Museum Collection showing a colourised image of a 47-year-old Dickens with tanned skin and an ostentatious waistcoat, textured navy jacket and a bow tie, part of an exhibition featuring the only known remaining items of the writer???s clothing at The Charles Dickens Museum at Number 48 Doughty Street, which will reopen after months of closure after securing National Lottery funding. The museum is situated at what was once his London home.
Colourised image of a 47-year-old Dickens

The Charles Dickens Museum will reopen after months of closure after securing National Lottery funding.

Number 48 Doughty Street will be up and running with an exhibition featuring the only known remaining items of the writer’s clothing.

The museum is at the London residence where Dickens wrote classics Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

It closed during the pandemic and now says it is only able to reopen after receiving £185,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Dickens' study inside The Charles Dickens Museum at Number 48 Doughty Street

Usually popular with tourists, it has called on Londoners and UK visitors to visit the author’s home.

Dickens’ black silk grosgrain waistcoat, made in 1860, will go on display for the first time in more than 100 years, having been in a private collection.

A dark woollen Court Suit worn by Dickens when meeting Edward, Prince of Wales at St James’s Palace in 1870, the only other known piece of Dickens’s clothing in existence, will also go on show in the exhibition Technicolour Dickens.

Dickens' Court suit

Visitors will also be able to see colourised images of Dickens, following research on the famous novelist’s fashion choices, and the skin tone and the complexion of his living descendants.

Dickens now appears with tanned skin in the photographs.

Ros Kerslake, chief executive of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, added heritage has a role “in making communities better places to live, supporting economic regeneration and benefiting our personal wellbeing”, which will be “even even more important as we emerge from this current crisis”.

Technicolour Dickens: The Living Image Of Charles Dickens runs from July 25 2020 to April 25 2021. Tickets can be booked in advance at www.dickensmuseum.com, which is open three days a week on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.