Lombard Street (Dickens-era site), London

Lombard Street in London may sound like the setting for a high-stakes banker drama-and honestly, it kind of is. Situated just off Bank Junction in the City of London, this narrow, unassuming street has been the powerhouse of British finance for centuries. Presently home to many financial institutions and an affluent residential area, the locale has a notable history.

Its name comes from the Lombards, a group of enterprising merchants from northern Italy who settled in London during the medieval period. These guys basically brought European banking to England in the 13th century-a sort of fintech startups of the Middle Ages, but in velvet robes. The street became home to goldsmiths, insurers, and bankers, many of whom marked their premises not with addresses (those weren’t a thing yet) but with swinging signs-like “The Grasshopper” for Sir Thomas Gresham’s shop, who later founded the Royal Exchange.

By the 17th century, Lombard Street was the “Wall Street” of its day. Banks like Barclays have their roots here. And at 1 Lombard Street, in the 1800s, stood the very respectable Smith, Payne & Smiths Bank. The manager, George Beadnell, lived next door, and in 1831, he threw a dinner party that would change the course of literary crushes forever.

Among the guests was a 19-year-old Charles Dickens-ambitious, dreamy, and hopelessly smitten with Beadnell’s third daughter, Maria. He described his infatuation as being like a “captured butterfly” pinned to her dress. Romantic? Definitely. Slightly unhinged? Also yes. Dickens would apparently walk the street at night just to gaze longingly at the house where Maria slept. This went on for four years-until she returned from abroad and ended their relationship with all the grace of a Regency breakup.

But Dickens didn’t let it go. Oh no. Maria would later live on in his fiction-as sweet, shallow Dora Spenlow in David Copperfield. Years later, in 1855, she resurfaced in real life as Mrs. Winter, reaching out to Dickens for a meeting. Anticipation ran high, but Dickens was profoundly disappointed, finding Maria "toothless, fat, old and ugly". This, in turn, prompted him to portray her as the slightly ridiculous Flora Finching in Little Dorrit. Life imitating art… or maybe revenge in prose.

Oh, and The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (more commonly known as The Pickwick Papers)-Dickens’ debut novel-it features the George and Vulture inn right here on Lombard Street. Because why not immortalize the place where you once got emotionally wrecked?