The sketch Mr Minns and his Cousin (originally titled A Dinner at Poplar Walk), was the first work of fiction Dickens ever published. It appeared in The Monthly Magazine in December 1833. Although Dickens continued to place pieces in that magazine, none of them bore a signature until August 1834, when The Boarding House" appeared under the strange pen-name Boz. A verse in Bentley's Miscellany for March 1837 recalled the publics.