Literary London

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Swedenborg House

Bloomsbury's hidden house of the mystic who shaped Blake, Baudelaire and Borges: a library, a bookshop and a lecture hall.

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Photo by Magnus Manske, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Swedenborg Society was founded in 1810 to publish the Swedish visionary's works in English and has occupied this Bloomsbury house since 1925: a library of everything by and about him, a bookshop, a museum room of relics and a panelled hall where the talks, films and readings are held. Blake attended the first Swedenborgian conference in 1789 and answered him in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Coleridge, Yeats, Strindberg and Borges all read him, and the society's programme keeps that lineage going with writers who would not otherwise share a room.

Where
20-21 Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2TH
Nearest station
Holborn · 3 min walk

Hours

Monday09:30 – 17:00
Tuesday09:30 – 17:00
Wednesday09:30 – 17:00
Thursday09:30 – 17:00
Friday09:30 – 17:00
SaturdayClosed
SundayClosed

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 5 September 2026.

Bookshop hours; the library and archive by appointment, exhibitions and talks in the hall in the evenings.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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