The Albion (now Royal Albion) Hotel, Broadstairs, Kent. Photograph and text by Jacqueline Banerjee. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite it in a print one.]
The Royal Albion's cheerful and popular sea-frontage [click on thumbnail for larger picture]
"We have an excellent hotel — capital baths, warm, cold, and shower — first-rate bathing-machines — and as good butchers, bakers, and grocers, as heart could desire," wrote Dickens of Broadstairs in his short article, "Our English Watering-Place," in 1851. The "excellent hotel" now incorporates the house where he lodged on an early visit. The Albion was the place where he refreshed himself with "Holland's gin" after his first journey to the resort, and enjoyed a "merry night with John Forster when he came to visit him there (Hibbert 207, 210). It was also where he stayed on his final visit in 1859.
Related Material
- Fort House, Broadstairs
- The sands at Broadstairs (this shows the hotel overlooking the resort)
- Dickens House, Broadstairs
- The Seaside in the Victorian Literary Imagination
References
Dickens, Charles. "Our English Watering-Place" (Reprinted Pieces, in Project Gutenberg). Web. Viewed 20 September 2010.
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. 2 vols. Vol. I, 1812-1842. London: Chapman and Hall, 1904.
Hibbert Christopher. Charles Dickens: The Making of a Literary Giant. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Last modified 23 February 2024