Gads Hill Place

[2] Dickens was later to write, " I used to look at it as a wonderful Mansion (which God knows it is not) when I was a very odd little child with the first faint shadows of all my books in my head - I suppose.

Dickens had bookshelves installed in his study at Gads Hill Place, some of which contained dummy books the titles of which he invented to reflect his own prejudices and opinions, including Hansard's Guide to Refreshing Sleep, History of a Short Chancery Suit in twenty-one volumes, Socrates on Wedlock, King Henry the Eighth's Evidences of Christianity, and the series The Wisdom of Our Ancestors: I Ignorance, II Superstition, III The Block, IV The Stake, V The Rack, VI Dirt, and VII Disease.

[4] Dickens was visited at Gads Hill Place in 1857 by Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, who was invited for two weeks but who stayed for five.

The house remained Dickens's country home until his death in 1870, dying as he did of a stroke on a couch in the dining room there.

[7] Gads Hill Place was bought by Charles Dickens, Jr. after his father's death, but he was forced to give it up in 1879 because of his own ill-health and financial difficulties.