Swedenborg House

Swedenborg House Publisher | Bookshop | Museum | Library | Archive | Gallery | Event Space

Publisher | library | bookshop | Museum | Library | Archive | Event Space | Focused on the ideas & influence of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

20 August 1854: Death of philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854). The theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg prov...
20/08/2026

20 August 1854: Death of philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854). The theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg proved influential to Schelling in the development of his own idealist philosophy. Schelling’s engagement with Swedenborg’s ideas was deeply personal, its intensity fuelled by the untimely deaths of two women who he loved. Image: 'Two Men Contemplating the Moon', Caspar David Friedrich, ca. 1825-30, The Met.

DON'T MISS!! Our current exhibition exhibition 'After Fragments': a multimedia solo exhibition by artist Hannah Hughes.T...
19/08/2026

DON'T MISS!! Our current exhibition exhibition 'After Fragments': a multimedia solo exhibition by artist Hannah Hughes.

The 'material fragments' Hughes presents - across collage, ceramics and drawings - resonate with Swedenborg's conceptualism of 'representatives', and invite renewed attention to his use of words respectively often translated as 'form', 'shape', 'object' and 'vessel', as James Wilson has written in an accompanying text.

Open Monday - Friday 10am-5pm, Saturdays 12pm-5pm until Saturday 12 September 2026: https://www.swedenborg.org.uk/events/after-fragments-hannah-hughes/

Image: Hannah Hughes, 'Superposition (Hollow)', 2026. Unique collage, archival pigment printed papers. 11.2cm x 12.5cm. Courtesy of the artist.

18 August 1850: Death of Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850). In a letter written in 1837 to his future wife Madame Hanska, t...
18/08/2026

18 August 1850: Death of Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850). In a letter written in 1837 to his future wife Madame Hanska, the great French novelist declared that ‘Swedenborgianism’ was his religion. The influence of Swedenborg on Balzac is most clearly seen in ‘Louis Lambert’ and ‘Séraphîta’ (which influenced artists as diverse as Strindberg, Yeats and Schoenberg). Swedenborgian influence is also present in ‘La Peau de Chagrin’, ‘A La Recherche de l’Absolu’, ‘Ursule Mirouët’, ‘Cousin Pons’ and other works.

! As part of our Open House programme 2026 please join us on Monday 14 September, 11am-1pm, for a guided tour of Sweden...
17/08/2026

! As part of our Open House programme 2026 please join us on Monday 14 September, 11am-1pm, for a guided tour of Swedenborg House led by James Wilson of the Swedenborg Society. James will give a tour of the architectural features and provide an overview of the history of both the building and the Swedenborg Society as an organization. Bookings for the tour are via Open House’s website (and are open from midday 19 August 2026). FREE but limited places available: https://programme.openhouse.org.uk/listings/889

! As part of our Open House 2026 programme please join us on Wednesday 16 September, 2.30pm-4.30pm, for a guided walk o...
16/08/2026

! As part of our Open House 2026 programme please join us on Wednesday 16 September, 2.30pm-4.30pm, for a guided walk of ‘Swedenborg’s London’. Starting at Swedenborg House (20-21 Bloomsbury Way), the walk will proceed east to Cold Bath Square, where Swedenborg lived (and died), and then south to St Paul’s, where Swedenborg’s printers and publishers operated. Along the way the walk will also encompass Hatton Garden (where the first purpose-built Swedenborgian church in London once stood), Fetter Lane (where Swedenborg attended the Moravian church), and Fleet Street (where Swedenborg visited the new headquarters of the Royal Society, and where he once resided in Salisbury Court). The walk will be led by James Wilson and Mark Riley of the Swedenborg Society. Bookings for the walk are via Open House’s website (and are open from midday 19 August 2026). FREE but limited places available: https://programme.openhouse.org.uk/listings/889

Image: 26 Cold Bath Fields (c. 1929). The house of Richard Shearsmith, and the place where Swedenborg lodged when in London.

14 August 2004: Death of Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004). Poet, novelist, essayist, translator, critic and scholar, Milosz ...
14/08/2026

14 August 2004: Death of Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004). Poet, novelist, essayist, translator, critic and scholar, Milosz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. He acknowledged Swedenborg as one of his main sources of inspiration, along with Blake, Dostoevsky, Simone Weil and his own distant cousin, Oscar V de L Milosz (a French poet of Lithuanian origin and reader of Swedenborg). Image: 'The Angel Appearing to Zacharias', William Blake, 1799-1800, The Met.

In cosmology Emanuel Swedenborg gave form to the nebular hypothesis for the origin of the solar system (once attributed ...
12/08/2026

In cosmology Emanuel Swedenborg gave form to the nebular hypothesis for the origin of the solar system (once attributed to Kant and Laplace). While in England, Swedenborg studied briefly with Edmond Halley (of Halley’s comet fame) and John Flamsteed (the first Royal Astronomer) and attended lectures by Isaac Newton. Discover more about Swedenborg on our website: https://www.swedenborg.org.uk/about-us/about-swedenborg/. Image: 'Cornfield by Moonlight, with the Evening Star', Samuel Palmer, c.1830, © The Trustees of the British Museum.

12 August 1827: Death of the poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827). Having read Swedenborg, Blake attended the fir...
12/08/2026

12 August 1827: Death of the poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827). Having read Swedenborg, Blake attended the first conference of the New Jerusalem Church held at Great East Cheap in the City of London in April 1789. The influence of Swedenborg’s teachings is evident throughout Blake’s poetry, prose and visual art. One of Blake’s oldest and closest friends was the sculptor John Flaxman, a founder member of the Swedenborg Society. Photo credit: Glasgow Life Museums.

! The following description of Swedenborg’s garden is taken from 'Gardens of Heaven and Earth' by Kristin King:One of t...
10/08/2026

! The following description of Swedenborg’s garden is taken from 'Gardens of Heaven and Earth' by Kristin King:

One of the few records we have of the plants in Swedenborg’s own garden comes from a 1752 almanac in which Swedenborg wrote notes in the margins indicating which pages of the Arcana Coelestia had been sent to the printer and, on the reverse side, a record of plants in his greenhouse... Swedenborg’s modest garden plot of just over an acre held plants from all over the world, and a variety of structures, pathways and beds. In addition to vegetables, fruit trees, poplar and cypress, there were arrays of flowers: tulips, hyacinths, carnations, sweet peas, larkspur, violets, scabiosa, sweet william, Canterbury bells, catmint, chalcedonica, spurrey, lilies, sunflowers, and roses of many varieties.

Images: from 'The English Herbal’, William Salmon, 1710.

Address

Swedenborg House, 20 Bloomsbury Way
London
WC1A2TH

Opening Hours

Monday 9:30am - 5pm
Tuesday 9:30am - 5pm
Wednesday 9:30am - 5pm
Thursday 9:30am - 5pm
Friday 9:30am - 5pm

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+442074057986

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