Sydney Smith, Charles Dickens, Vera Brittain, and Winifred Holtby at Doughty Street, Bloomsbury: Literary London #21

The impressive Doughty Street had security gates at each end in Charles Dickens's day: it was a very short distance from the slums of Saffron Hill, where Dickens had set Fagin's hovel in Oliver Twist.

14 Doughty Street. 'Sydney Smith 1771-1845 Author and Wit Lived Here'.

48 Doughty Street. 'Charles Dickens 1812-1870 Novelist Lived Here'. Dickens lived here from 1837 to 1839, when he was completing Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1839), most of Nicholas Nickleby (1839), and the start of Barnaby Rudge. He had married Catherine a short time before living here.

52 Doughty Street. Unfortunately, the whole house has scaffolding over it, and does not take a pretty photo, although the blue plaque is readable:

'Vera

Brittain

1893-1970

Winifred

Holtby

1898-1935

Writers and Reformers

lived here'.

 ADDENDUM: In August 2013 I returned to the street and took pictures of a house clear of scaffolding: