Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place and Gad's Hill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens, the most successful British author of the Victorian era. Today the building is the independent Gad's Hill School.
Gads Hill Place today
Dickens' Dream by Robert William Buss, portraying Dickens at his desk at Gads Hill surrounded by many of his characters
Group portrait in the porch at Gads Hill Place in 1862, H.F. Chorley, Kate Dickens, Mamie Dickens, Charles Dickens, C.A. Collins and Georgina Hogarth
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
Portrait by Jeremiah Gurney, c. 1867–1868
Charles Dickens's birthplace, 393 Commercial Road, Portsmouth
2 Ordnance Terrace, Chatham, Dickens's home 1817 – May 1821
Illustration by Fred Bernard of Dickens at work in a shoe-blacking factory after his father had been sent to the Marshalsea, published in the 1892 edition of Forster's Life of Charles Dickens