Charles Dickens
Who was he?
Wikipedia:
Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870),
pen-name "Boz," was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian
era, and one of the most popular of all time, responsible for some of
English literature's most iconic characters.
Among his best-known works are
Great Expectations,
David
Copperfield,
Oliver Twist,
A Tale of Two Cities,
Bleak
House,
Nicholas Nickleby,
The Pickwick Papers, and
A
Christmas
Carol.
Why was he in Bath?
He often visited his close friend
Walter Savage
Landor at
his house at 35, St. James's Square. According to
Swift and Elliott (2012), the plaque is
"something of a red herring, for, as far as we know, [Dickens] never so
much as spent the night there", returning after taking dinner to the
York House Hotel on George Street, where he invariably stayed on his
visits to Bath. The city gave Dickens inspiration for many of his
characters -
Mr Pickwick was
almost certainly based on Moses Pickwick, landlord of the
White Hart inn.
The text reads
"Here dwelt Charles Dickens 1840"
Location map of 35, St. James’s Square:
(c) 2012
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