The most popular English novelist of the nineteenth century, who was never a Paris resident in the ordinary sense but kept coming back for twenty-five years: one winter in a rented mansion on the rue de Courcelles, a second winter on the Champs-Élysées writing Little Dorrit, repeated compulsive visits to the Paris Morgue — the riverside building where the city displayed its unidentified dead to the public — and a novel of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, that has shaped how English readers picture Paris ever since.
Charles Dickens wrote fifteen novels between 1836 and 1870 and was, by a wide margin, the most widely read English author of his century. He was born near Portsmouth on the south coast of England in 1812, spent his childhood in poverty severe enough to put him to work in a factory at twelve, and turned that experience into books — Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House — that made him famous across Europe and America before he was forty.
Paris was not his city, and this page does not pretend otherwise. He never emigrated, never joined a literary circle there, and never wrote in French beyond a running private joke of a language he invented in letters to friends. What he did was visit, again and again, from the 1840s until the last decade of his life, twice staying long enough to keep a household. The two long stays were the winter of 1846–47 at 48 rue de Courcelles and the winter of 1855–56 on the avenue des Champs-Élysées. On one January evening in 1847 he was received at the Place des Vosges — the seventeenth-century square in the Marais, on the Right Bank — by Victor Hugo, the leading French writer of the age, and supped in the same fortnight with Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers. Out of all the looking came A Tale of Two Cities, his 1859 novel of London and Paris in the years of the French Revolution of 1789 — the uprising that overthrew the monarchy and executed thousands, the king among them — and it remains the English novel through which most readers first imagine the city's violent past.
Dickens arrived in Paris in November 1846 with his wife Catherine, their children, and what he described as several tons of luggage. He was thirty-four and midway through Dombey and Son, a novel he was publishing in monthly instalments, which meant the household had to be settled fast. Within a day he had taken a house at 48 rue de Courcelles, near the Faubourg Saint-Honoré — the wealthy quarter of the Right Bank, the half of Paris north of the Seine — and had begun writing to his friend and future biographer John Forster, a London journalist and critic, about it in tones of comic disbelief. He called it the most ridiculous and preposterous house in the world, reported that one room was a tent and another a grove, and that the bedrooms were exactly like opera boxes. It belonged to a marquis, and it had a courtyard, a garden and a porter's lodge: a Paris mansion in miniature, rented by an Englishman who could not stop laughing at it.
The complaint underneath the joke was the cold. Dickens wrote that there was not a door or window in all Paris that shut, and not a chink in the city that could be stopped to keep the wind out. He worked through the winter on Dombey and Son and walked enormous distances at night, a habit he kept in every city he lived in. The brightness of the streets, he said, almost frightened him.
In January 1847 John Forster came over from London for a fortnight, and the two of them went at the city with what Forster called a dreadful insatiability. They saw prisons, palaces, hospitals and theatres; the Louvre, the royal palace turned national art museum; the vast palaces of Versailles and Saint-Cloud outside the city; the Morgue, where the unclaimed dead were laid out for the public to identify; and the sites of the Revolution of 1789. At the Bibliothèque Royale, the French royal library, they were shown the metal type used by Johannes Gutenberg, who printed the first European books with movable type in the 1450s, and a volume of the Greek tragedian Sophocles annotated in the hand of Jean Racine, France's greatest writer of tragedy. They supped with Alexandre Dumas, whose new theatre was then being built, and with Eugène Sue, the best-selling author of The Mysteries of Paris, a sensational serial novel of the city's criminal underworld, and met the poet Théophile Gautier.
The evening that both men remembered was at the house of Victor Hugo, who at forty-four was France's dominant poet, novelist and playwright — the author of Notre-Dame de Paris, known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame — and had recently been made a peer of the realm by Louis-Philippe, then king of the French. Hugo occupied a floor of a corner house on the Place Royale, the square in the Marais district now called the Place des Vosges. Forster described tapestries, painted ceilings, old gold furniture and a medieval canopy of state, and then wrote that Hugo himself was the best thing they saw. Hugo talked about his childhood in Spain, praised English writing, laughed at the actors who had wrecked one of his tragedies, and paid Dickens compliments that Forster judged to be in the best possible taste. Dickens, he recorded, long remembered the enjoyment of that evening.
The residence ended badly and early. Dickens had written one monthly instalment of Dombey and Son two pages short of the length the printers needed, and had to cross to London to supply them. Shortly after he returned to Paris, word came that his eldest son had fallen ill with scarlet fever in England. The family went back in February 1847, and the Paris household was broken up.
Dickens came back for a longer stay from November 1855 to the end of April 1856, this time in an apartment on the avenue des Champs-Élysées, after two failed attempts at houses on the rue Balzac and the rue Lord Byron. He was writing Little Dorrit, his novel about debt and imprisonment, and the flow of Paris past his windows — the Emperor Napoleon III, who had made himself ruler of France three years earlier, and the Empress driving to and from their palace at Saint-Cloud, all day, every day — was part of the appeal.
What had changed since 1846 was his standing. Le Moniteur, the official French government newspaper, was running a French translation of his novel Martin Chuzzlewit in daily instalments, and he found he could not hand over a visiting card in a shop without being recognised. Nine years, he wrote, had made a surprising difference to his notoriety. Within a week of arriving he had been taken up by Ary Scheffer, a Dutch-born painter then at the height of his French reputation, who introduced him to Paris society and asked to paint him. The sittings went on for months and Dickens loathed them, complaining that he could not see the slightest resemblance in the finished head. He did enjoy one evening of the arrangement: Scheffer gathered about sixty people in his long studio and Dickens read them The Cricket on the Hearth, his Christmas story of 1845.
The Paris institution Dickens wrote about most often was the Morgue, the public building beside the Seine where unidentified bodies were laid out behind glass for anyone to come in and look at. Admission was free and the city treated it as an ordinary sight. Dickens went repeatedly and was not comfortable about it. Writing as the narrator of The Uncommercial Traveller, the series of journalistic sketches he published from 1860, he put it plainly: whenever he was in Paris he was dragged there by an invisible force, never wanting to go and always pulled. He described an old grey man lying alone on a cold slab on Christmas Day with a tap running over his hair, the water taking a turn at the corner of his mouth so that the dead face looked sly. The detail is the kind he brought back from Paris rather than from anywhere else.
In 1859 Dickens launched a new weekly magazine, All the Year Round, and put his own new novel in its first number. A Tale of Two Cities moves between London and Paris across the years leading to and through the French Revolution of 1789. It opens on the sentence that has outlived nearly everything else he wrote — it was the best of times, it was the worst of times — and closes on Sydney Carton, the wasted English barrister of the story, going to the guillotine in place of the man his beloved married, with the words that it is a far, far better thing that he does than he has ever done.
The Paris of the novel is a specific one. Its centre is the Saint-Antoine quarter east of the Bastille — the royal fortress and prison whose storming by a Paris crowd on 14 July 1789 began the Revolution — and its recurring set is a wine shop in that quarter, run by Ernest and Thérèse Defarge, where a cask of wine breaks open in the street and the poor of the district drink it out of the mud. The prisons are named and used as prisons: the Bastille, where the novel's Doctor Manette was held for eighteen years, and La Force, where Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat by birth who has renounced his family, is confined. The crowd talks about the guillotine — the beheading machine the Revolution used for its public executions — as though it were a living person, and gives it pet names. Dickens had been reading the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, and he had walked the ground himself on the sightseeing fortnight of 1847, when Forster recorded them visiting all the spots made memorable by the first revolution, meaning that of 1789 rather than the later French risings of 1830 and 1848.
The book is the reason Dickens belongs in a Paris atlas at all. He did not join the city's literary life, did not write in its language and left no address that trades on his name. What he left is a novel that, for a very large number of English-speaking readers, is still the first place they meet revolutionary Paris.
In January 1863 Dickens brought his daughter Mary and his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth to Paris and gave public readings from his own books at the British Embassy, the London government's mission in the city, in aid of the British Charitable Fund, which supported British residents of Paris who had fallen into poverty. By this stage of his life the readings were a second career, performed to large paying audiences in Britain and America, and the Paris nights were a success on the same scale. Someone present at the second reading, on 30 January 1863, described two hours of excitement and pleasure, and an audience that went on murmuring and applauding into their carriages and down the street. He agreed to read twice more.
Dickens died at Gad's Hill Place, his house near Rochester in Kent, on 9 June 1870, aged fifty-eight, leaving the novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the London church where Britain buries its monarchs and its most celebrated dead. His London home of 1837 to 1839 at 48 Doughty Street survives as the Charles Dickens Museum, bought by the Dickens Fellowship in 1923 and open to the public since 1925. No comparable address survives in Paris.
Born at Landport in Portsea, near Portsmouth, on Friday 7 February.
Writes fifteen novels, among them Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and Great Expectations.
Arrives in Paris in November with his family and takes 48 rue de Courcelles, near the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, while writing Dombey and Son.
In January, a fortnight of sightseeing with John Forster: the Louvre, Versailles, the Morgue, the prisons and the sites of the Revolution.
Received by Victor Hugo at his apartment on the Place Royale, now the Place des Vosges; sups with Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue in the same fortnight.
Leaves Paris in February when his eldest son falls ill with scarlet fever in England; the residence ends early.
Returns in November for a second long stay, in an apartment on the avenue des Champs-Élysées, writing Little Dorrit. Le Moniteur is serialising Martin Chuzzlewit in French and he is recognised in shops.
Sits to the painter Ary Scheffer over several months and dislikes the result; reads The Cricket on the Hearth to about sixty guests in Scheffer's studio.
Leaves Paris at the end of April.
Starts the weekly All the Year Round and opens its first number with A Tale of Two Cities, his novel of London and Paris in the French Revolution.
Publishes the Uncommercial Traveller sketches, including his account of being pulled repeatedly into the Paris Morgue.
Reads from his books at the British Embassy in Paris for the British Charitable Fund, twice in January and twice more by demand.
Dies at Gad's Hill Place near Rochester on 9 June, aged fifty-eight, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Met · 1847
During the same January 1847 fortnight in Paris, Dickens and John Forster supped with Dumas and with Eugène Sue, author of The Mysteries of Paris, and met Théophile Gautier and Alphonse Karr. They also saw Dumas's new Théâtre Historique, then still being finished, and a New Year's piece at the Palais-Royal that put Dumas on stage in his study beside a five-foot pile of quarto volumes.
Met · 1847
In January 1847, during Dickens's winter at 48 rue de Courcelles, he was received by Hugo at his floor of a corner house on the Place Royale, now the Place des Vosges. John Forster was present and wrote the evening up: tapestries, painted ceilings and a medieval canopy of state, and Hugo talking about his Spanish childhood, praising English literature and paying Dickens compliments Forster thought were in the best possible taste.
Met · 1859
The acquaintance began in the post and in the dark. In January 1858 Dickens wrote to the anonymous author of Scenes of Clerical Life, addressing the envelope to "George Eliot, Esq." while telling the writer inside that he would have been strongly disposed to address her as a woman, because the touches in those stories were womanly and the title page did not convince him. Dickens dined with the Leweses for the first time on 10 November 1859, by which point the pseudonym had been given up to stop a Warwickshire clergyman claiming the books. Her verdict afterwards: a man one can thoroughly enjoy talking to, with a strain of real seriousness along with his keenness and humour.
The Louvre was one stop on the fortnight of sightseeing Dickens and John Forster made in January 1847, alongside prisons, palaces, hospitals, theatres, the Morgue, Versailles, Saint-Cloud and the sites of the Revolution of 1789.
Visit the placeJohn Forster lists Versailles among the places he and Charles Dickens went to see during a fortnight of sightseeing from Paris in January 1847, alongside the Louvre, Saint-Cloud, the Morgue and the prisons. He does not describe what they saw at the palace; by then the building held Louis-Philippe's history museum, open since 1837.
Visit the placeHe kept a household there twice, but never settled. The first stay ran from November 1846 to February 1847 at 48 rue de Courcelles, near the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and ended early when his eldest son caught scarlet fever in England. The second ran from November 1855 to the end of April 1856, in an apartment on the avenue des Champs-Élysées. In between and afterwards he visited often, but he remained an English writer who came to Paris rather than a resident of it.
Yes, in January 1847. Dickens's friend John Forster was with him and wrote the evening up: Hugo received them on his floor of a corner house on the Place Royale, now the Place des Vosges, among tapestries, painted ceilings and old gilt furniture. Hugo spoke about his Spanish childhood, praised English literature, and complimented Dickens in what Forster called the best taste. Dickens remembered the evening for a long time afterwards.
Half of it. The novel moves between London and Paris across the years around the French Revolution of 1789, the uprising that brought down the French monarchy. Its Paris scenes concentrate in the poor eastern quarter of Saint-Antoine, around the wine shop kept by the Defarges, and in the prisons: the Bastille, the royal fortress-prison whose storming began the Revolution, where the novel's Doctor Manette was held for eighteen years, and La Force, where the young Frenchman Charles Darnay is held. It was published in 1859 in the first numbers of Dickens's weekly magazine All the Year Round.
During the 1846–47 winter he was writing Dombey and Son, which was coming out in monthly instalments, and he had to make an unplanned trip to London because one instalment had come in two pages short of the required length. During the 1855–56 winter he was writing Little Dorrit. A Tale of Two Cities, the novel most associated with the city, was written in England and published in 1859.
He never satisfactorily explained it, and said so. The Morgue was a public building beside the Seine where unidentified bodies were displayed behind glass, free to enter, and treated by the city as an ordinary sight. Writing in his Uncommercial Traveller sketches, Dickens said that whenever he was in Paris he was dragged there by an invisible force, that he never wanted to go, and that he was always pulled.
Yes. In January 1863 he read from his own books at the British Embassy in Paris in aid of the British Charitable Fund. The performances were a success. An eyewitness at the reading of 30 January described two hours of excitement and an audience still applauding as they reached their carriages, and he agreed to read twice more.
No. Neither of his Paris addresses is preserved or marked as a museum. The house that is open is in London: 48 Doughty Street, where he lived from 1837 to 1839 and finished The Pickwick Papers and wrote Oliver Twist. The Dickens Fellowship bought it in 1923 and it has been open to the public as the Charles Dickens Museum since 1925.
Met · 1847
During the same January 1847 fortnight in Paris, Dickens and John Forster supped with Dumas and with Eugène Sue, author of The Mysteries of Paris, and met Théophile Gautier and Alphonse Karr. They also saw Dumas's new Théâtre Historique, then still being finished, and a New Year's piece at the Palais-Royal that put Dumas on stage in his study beside a five-foot pile of quarto volumes.
Met · 1847
In January 1847, during Dickens's winter at 48 rue de Courcelles, he was received by Hugo at his floor of a corner house on the Place Royale, now the Place des Vosges. John Forster was present and wrote the evening up: tapestries, painted ceilings and a medieval canopy of state, and Hugo talking about his Spanish childhood, praising English literature and paying Dickens compliments Forster thought were in the best possible taste.
Visited · 1847
The Louvre was one stop on the fortnight of sightseeing Dickens and John Forster made in January 1847, alongside prisons, palaces, hospitals, theatres, the Morgue, Versailles, Saint-Cloud and the sites of the Revolution of 1789.
Visited · 1847
John Forster lists Versailles among the places he and Charles Dickens went to see during a fortnight of sightseeing from Paris in January 1847, alongside the Louvre, Saint-Cloud, the Morgue and the prisons. He does not describe what they saw at the palace; by then the building held Louis-Philippe's history museum, open since 1837.
Met · 1859
The acquaintance began in the post and in the dark. In January 1858 Dickens wrote to the anonymous author of Scenes of Clerical Life, addressing the envelope to "George Eliot, Esq." while telling the writer inside that he would have been strongly disposed to address her as a woman, because the touches in those stories were womanly and the title page did not convince him. Dickens dined with the Leweses for the first time on 10 November 1859, by which point the pseudonym had been given up to stop a Warwickshire clergyman claiming the books. Her verdict afterwards: a man one can thoroughly enjoy talking to, with a strain of real seriousness along with his keenness and humour.
The sources below include biographies, scholarly essays, interviews, and primary materials that informed this page. They reflect both the historical record and ongoing critical conversations about Charles Dickens and their work.
Forster was Dickens's closest friend and first biographer, was present in Paris in January 1847, and prints Dickens's letters from both long stays.
Dickens's own journalism on the Paris Morgue.
The museum at his surviving London house on his life and work.
Standard modern biography.
These references anchor the page in the documented record and in the scholarly conversations around Charles Dickens. Every claim on this page traces back to one or more of the works listed here.
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