"About the year 1834 w when the earliet of the Sketches by Boz were appearing in print a young composer named John Hullah Thset to music a portion of an opera called The Gondolier which he thought might prove successful on the stage. Twelve months later Hullah became acquainted with Charles Dickens whose name was then unknown to those outside his own immediate circle and it occurred to him that he and 'Boz' might combine Ththeir forces by converting The Gondolier into a popular play. Dickens who always entertained a passion for the theatre entered into the project at once and informed Hullah that he had a little unpublished story by him which he thought would dramatise Thwell even better than The Gondolier notion; confessing that he would rather deal with familiar English scenes than with the unfamiliar Venetian environment of the play favoured by Hullah."