Dickens. Johnson Street, Camden Town

Source: Sinclair, p. 19

Since the St. Pancras Journal adds "Included by kind permission of J. M. Dent & Sons," this image obviously comes from a volume published by Dent.

See commentary below

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[This image may be used without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose.]

This illustration from the June 1947 St. Pancras Journal appears in an article entitled "The Immortal of Doughty Street," the second in a series entitled "Renown and Our Neighbour: A series of Articles Concerning Famous Folk in the Story of St. Pancras," by Frederick Sinclair, Borough Librarian and Editor of the journal. On page 19, Sinclair has positioned "Dickens. Johnson Street, Camden Town," in the midst of a discussion about Dickens's early London residences. After the May, 1824, inheritance that resulted in John Dickens's being released from the Marshalsea Prison as an insolvent debtor, he moved his family back to the St. Pancras area, initially to Little College Street, and then to No. 29 Johnson Street, Somers Town for a period of perhaps four years.

Johnson Street was the thoroughfare near the Veterinary College, Camden Town, where [in Dickens's fiction] the Micawbers dwelt, when Traddles, David Copperfield's friend and schoolfellow, was their lodger. Between the years 1922 and 1932 the premises, then No. 13, housed "David Copperfield's Library" for children--thanks to the whole-hearted efforts of an American clergyman, the Rev. John Brett-Longstaff, some time head of Magdalen College House, Oakley Square. [19]

References

Sinclair, Frederick. "The Immortal of Doughty Street." St. Pancras Journal (June 1947), 19-20.

Last modified 19 July 2007