The Museum of London’s Charles Dickens exhibition – Bringing Victorian times back to contemporary London.

Charles Dickens, one of the greatest English novelists of all time, managed to single-handedly romanticise and mystify Victorian London. London, with its gangs, villains, trials and tribulations, was a main focus in many of Dickens’ novels, and one that has managed to captivate the imagination of readers with a longevity most author’s fail to achieve.

To celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the Museum of London is holding a major Charles Dickens exhibition.

Running until Sunday June 10, 2011, The Museum of London’s Charles Dickens exhibition will recreate an atmosphere of Victorian London through different sounds, sights and smells, taking visitors back in time to an era that inspired the great author to write his legendary novels.

Costumes, artefacts, photographs and paintings will fill the Museum of London’s rooms; all dedicated to illustrating the themes that Dickens so ingeniously wove into his stories.

Dickens’ childhood, which included working in a blacking factory while his father was imprisoned by debtors, had a prolific influence on his novels, and such important social themes, including poverty, childhood mortality and prostitution, will all be highlighted and examined in this first major Dickens exhibition in the UK for more than 40 years.

The Museum of London’s Charles Dickens exhibition will also include a specifically commissioned film that explores the similarities between London after dusk today and night-time London during Victorian times, when events took a particularly sinister twist.

The film, which has been produced by William Raban, one of Britain’s leading documentary filmmakers, is part of the exhibition’s wider pioneering audio-visual experience, returning Dickens’ world of 150 years ago into the modern world.