Charles Dickens Museum opens exhibition

London: The Charles Dickens Museum, the famous English author's former Bloomsbury home, this December opened a new exhibition exploring the themes of perhaps his most enduring piece of work.

A Christmas Carol Reimagined, the exhibition, presents new works by illustration students from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts.

The works were inspired by the themes of Dickens' story, and the social situations which provoked him to tell the tale of the Christmas eve redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge.

The exhibition took place at the museum where Dickens completed The Pickwick Papers and wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

The exhibition runs from December 1, 2015 to January 6, 2016.

Written in six weeks in the winter of 1843, A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in the six days between its release and Christmas eve that same year and has never been out of print since.

Inspired by a damning parliamentary report on child labour and growing awareness of child poverty, the book follows Ebenezer Scrooge on a path to redemption over the course of a tortuous (for him, not for us) Christmas eve night.

As the exhibition opened, the museum was dressed for a beautiful celebration of a Victorian Christmas.

The historic rooms in which Dickens lived and worked, was filled with all the decorations, fragrances and sounds of a 19th-century London Christmas.

Louisa Price, Curator at the museum, said: "Charles Dickens loved celebrating Christmas, both with his family and with the many friends that would visit him at Doughty Street."

"His love of Christmas was slightly at odds with the general trend at the time and it is fair to say that he is responsible in quite a significant way for the revival of great public celebrations of Christmas in Britain," said Price.

"Christmas at the museum has become a favourite annual fixture for many Londoners and visitors to London, as well as for all of us that work here and are able to spend so much time in Dickens' rooms."

"We are always excited to invite new visitors to step into one of the most special Christmas atmospheres around, to celebrate the work of England's greatest novelist and a very special time of the year," said Price.

The museum holds the world's most comprehensive collection of Dickens-related objects. Visitors could find the desk where Dickens wrote Great Expectations.

Visitors could see the raised reading desk he designed and from which he make countless public readings, and examine original manuscript of his great works, letters, personal items and photographs.