The house where Victorian classics Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby were penned will reopen to the public next week following a £3.1m transformation of the Charles Dickens Museum.

The reopening of the attraction next Monday marks the culmination of a year of events to celebrate the author's bicentenary.

The museum in Bloomsbury, London, which includes the Georgian townhouse Dickens occupied from 1837-1839, has doubled in size under the transformation with a neighbouring property now housing a temporary exhibition space, education and study areas, a café and the National Dickens Library and Archive.

In the original home the attic and kitchen have been opened to the public for the first time and a lift and step-free access have significantly enhanced disabled access.

Visitors will be able to take tours led by a costumed guide where they can view Dickens? reading desk in his drawing room, personal items in the master bedroom and the bedroom where his sister-in-law Mary died at the age of 17.

An exhibition of costumes from the recent screen adaptation of Great Expectations will be on loan to the museum for the opening.

The museum first opened to the public in 1925 and has welcomed more than a million visitors since.