Reade Charles

Reade, Charles (1814-84), was born in Oxfordshire, graduated at Oxford, obtaining a fellowship at Magdalen, and studied law for a time. Feeling a desire to write for the stage, he produced his first play in 1850, but it was not a success. In 1852 appeared his earliest novel, Peg Woffington, which convinced the public that a distinctly powerful writer had arisen. He had studied the art of fiction for years before he attempted to publish a line. Christie Johnstone appeared in 1853, and was followed by Never too Late to Mend (1850), in which his purpose was to denounce certain horrors of prison life. For this and all his other novels with a purpose he read very largely. The Cloister and the Hearth, which is often looked upon as his greatest work, came out in 1861. Hard Cash (1863) exposed the cruelties of private lunatic asylums, and Griffith Gaunt (1866) was believed by him to be his best work. He wrote Foul Play in conjunction with Boucicault (1869), writing much for the stage meanwhile. Though he had the greatest faith in his power as a dramatist, the only truly successful play he wrote was Drink, an adaptation of L'Assommoir. He was a man of very strong opinions about literary property, and was generally at war wilh somebody or other. He is certainly one of the great English novelists of the century.