With a running time of 3 hours and over 40 actors, Fox Cooper's 1860 adaptation was part extravaganza and part melodrama that catered to the working class patrons of the Victoria Theatre where it was first produced. Competing against Tom Tyler's sanctioned adaptation of the novel, Cooper's play was disregarded by Dickensians at the time. However, today it is considered one of the better Victorian adaptations. Dramatist, actor, director and theatre manager Charles Frederick Fox Cooper was a controversial and colorful character of the Victorian stage who more than once was assaulted by his actors and arrested for causing a riot. Throughout his long career he managed the Dover Theatre, City of London Theatre, and Strand Theatre, among others. As a playwright his plays were either well received and successful or notorious flops. He could write in a variety of theatre styles from historical dramas to light operettas. He would later go on to adapt "Hard Times" and "Little Dorrit" two Dickens' novels ignored by contemporary playwrights.