Charles Dickens’s desk, writing slope, lamp, desk calendar, and chair

Narrator: Charles Dickens’s desk, writing slope, lamp, desk calendar, and chair. Before 1870. Chair before 1859. Desk: mahogany and leathers on metal castors. Writing slope: wood and leather. Lamp: metal and frosted glass with ceramic knob. Desk calendar: tinned iron, paint, and paper. Chair: wood and cane on metal castors. Desk is about 2 feet 5 inches high by 2 feet deep by 3 feet wide, with its two side leaves folded down.

These objects are displayed as if in use, with the chair pulled up to the desk.

The darkish-colored wooden chair has a cane seat and arms that curve round to form a semicircle. The desk is more of a highly polished, redder-colored wood; it has two leaves, which are folded down, and two drawers at front. The central area, between the leaves, has an inlaid black leather top. Placed on this leather top, and almost covering it, is the writing slope—a slightly angled wooden surface, covered in black leather. At the rear left corner is the gas lamp, a frosted glass globe on a metal stand. At the opposite rear right corner is a small paper calendar showing the date, one day at a time.

Interpretive commentary follows.

Anna Deavere Smith: Charles Dickens is regarded today as a giant of 19th-century British literature. He’s known for such monumental works as A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. In fact, we believe Dickens may have written several chapters of Great Expectations while seated at this very desk. Declan Kiely is Director of Special Collections and Exhibitions here at the Library.

Declan Kiely: Many of us know what it is to sit at a desk and work, but being able to see where the author sat and wrote his work brings us into a more intimate connection with him.

Anna Deavere Smith: We don’t know exactly where this desk was situated in Dickens’ Gads Hill home… 

Declan Kiely: …but it does have other day-to-day things that suggest that it was something Dickens used regularly. For example, the calendar that sits on top of the desk, which you can see here, is dated June 9. That was the last day of Dickens’s life and the calendar was never changed from that point onwards.  

Anna Deavere Smith: The only thing that’s not original in this display is the caning on the seat of the chair.

Declan Kiely: In the fall of 1940, the mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, was invited—or took it upon himself; we don’t know which—to sit in Dickens’s chair and see how it would have felt to have been the great author. Whereupon he broke right through the caning in the seat, and nobody has ever been allowed to sit in Dickens’s chair since that date.