Charles Reade - WikiHQ

Charles Reade (8 June 1814 – 11 April 1884) was a British novelist and dramatist, best known for the 1861 historical novel The Cloister and the Hearth.

Life

Charles Reade was born at Ipsden, Oxfordshire, to John Reade and Anne Marie Scott-Waring, and had at least four brothers. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, taking his B.A. in 1835, and became a fellow of his college. He was subsequently dean of arts and vice-president, taking his degree of D.C.L. in 1847. His name was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1836; he was elected Vinerian Fellow in 1842, and was called to the bar in 1843. He kept his fellowship at Magdalen all his life but, after taking his degree, he spent most of his time in London. William Winwood Reade, the influential historian, was his nephew.

Writings

left|thumb|upright=1.3|Charles Reade, portrait of him writing, by Charles Mercier, circa 1870

Reade began his literary career as a dramatist, and he chose to have "dramatist" stand first in the list of his occupations on his tombstone. As an author, he always had an eye to stage effect in scenes and situations as well as in dialogue. His first comedy, The Ladies' Battle, an adaptation of Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé's play Bataille de Dames, appeared at the Olympic Theatre in May 1851. It was followed by Angela (1851), A Village Tale (1852), The Lost Husband (1852), and Gold (1853).

But Reade's reputation was made by the two-act comedy, Masks and Faces, in which he collaborated with Tom Taylor. It was produced in November 1852, and later was expanded into three acts. By the advice of the actress, Laura Seymour, he turned the play into a prose story which appeared in 1853 as Peg Woffington. The same year he wrote Christie Johnstone, a close study of Scottish fisher folk. In 1854 he produced, in conjunction with Tom Taylor, Two Loves and a Life, and The King's Rival, and, unaided, The Courier of Lyons (well known under its later title, The Lyons Mail) and his adaptation of Tobias Smollett's Peregrine Pickle. In the next year appeared Art (1855), afterwards known as Nance Oldfield.

thumb|Theatre poster from It is never too late to mend

He made his name as a novelist in 1856, when he published It Is Never Too Late to Mend, a novel written to reform abuses in prison discipline and the treatment of criminals. The truth of some details was challenged, and Reade defended himself vigorously. Five more novels followed in quick succession: The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth (1857), White Lies (1857), Jack of all Trades (1858), The Autobiography of a Thief (1858), and Love Me Little, Love Me Long (1859). White Lies started as a translation of Auguste Maquet's play Le Château de Grantier. After managers declined the manuscript, Reade adapted the story, weaving it into a novel which was serialised in The London Journal and published in three volumes the same year. He produced an adaptation of this on stage as The Double Marriage in 1867.

In 1861 Reade published what would become his most famous work, based on a few lines by the medieval humanist Erasmus about the life of his parents. The novel began life as a serial in Once a Week in 1859 under the title "A Good Fight", but when Reade disagreed with the proprietors of the magazine over some of the contentious subject matter (principally the unmarried pregnancy of the heroine), he abruptly curtailed the serialisation with a false happy ending. Reade continued to work on the novel and published it in 1861, thoroughly revised and extended, as The Cloister and the Hearth. It became recognised as one of the most successful historical novels. Returning from the 15th century to contemporary English life, he next produced Hard Cash (originally published as Very Hard Cash—but during the 19th century Reade was one of Britain's most popular novelists. He was not highly regarded by critics. The following assessment by Justin McCarthy, writing in 1872, is typical:<blockquote>

A strong, healthy air of honest and high purpose breathes through nearly all the stories. An utter absence of cant, affectation, and sham distinguishes them. A surprising variety of descriptive power, at once bold, broad, and realistic is one of their great merits. Mr. Reade can describe a sea-fight, a storm, the forging of a horseshoe, the ravages of an inundation, the trimming of a lady's dress, the tuning of a piano, with equal accuracy and apparent zest. . . .

Mr. Reade wants no quality which is necessary to make a powerful story-teller, while he is distinguished from all mere story-tellers by the fact that he has some great social object to serve in nearly everything he undertakes to detail. More than this I do not believe he is, nor, despite the evidences of something yet higher which were given in 'Christie Johnstone' and 'The Cloister and the Hearth,' do I think he ever could have been. He is a magnificent specimen of the modern special correspondent, endowed with the additional and unique gift of a faculty for throwing his report into the form of a thrilling story. But it requires something more than this, something higher than this, to make a great novelist whom the world will always remember. Mr. Reade is unsurpassed in the second class of English novelists, but he does not belong to the front rank. His success has been great in its way, but it is for an age and not for time.

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The author George Orwell summed up Reade's attraction as "the same charm as one finds in R. Austin Freeman's detective stories or Lieutenant-Commander Gould's collections of curiosities—the charm of useless knowledge," going on to say that

Reade was a man of what one might call penny-encyclopaedic learning. He possessed vast stocks of disconnected information which a lively narrative gift allowed him to cram into books which would at any rate pass as novels. If you have the sort of mind that takes a pleasure in dates, lists, catalogues, concrete details, descriptions of processes, junk-shop windows and back numbers of the Exchange and Mart, the sort of mind that likes knowing exactly how a medieval catapult worked or just what objects a prison cell of the eighteen-forties contained, then you can hardly help enjoying Reade.

Allusions

Ira Gershwin's lyric "It’s never too late to Mendelssohn...", which appears in both Oh, Kay! and Lady in the Dark, is a play on the title of Reade's book.

In Dickens and Daughter (1939), Gladys Storey repeats some literary reminiscences communicated to her by Kate Perugini, the daughter of Charles Dickens. She recalls "Kindly Charles Reade, who used to perch his expensive person upon a small circular-topped revolving piano-stool and sing comic songs in a tiny voice. He had a mistress who suffered the pains of rheumatism; when she died he caused her grave to be bricked in so that she might not feel the effects of the damp earth around her."

John Betjeman's poem "In Willesden Churchyard" includes a reference to "Laura Seymour's grave-/ 'So long the loyal counsellor and friend'/Of that Charles Reade whose coffin lies with hers/Was she his mistress?" followed by a long imagined passage about their possible relationship.

Works

Gold! (1853, play)
Masks and Faces (1852, play)
Peg Woffington (1853, novel)
Christie Johnstone (1853, novel)
The Courier of Lyons (1854, play. Also known as The Lyons Mail)
Clouds and Sunshine and Arts (1855)
It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1856, novel)
The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth (1857)
White Lies (1857, novel)
The Box Tunnel (1857, short story. Only published in book form in America)
Autobiography of a Thief (1858, novelette about a train robbery)
(novelette about the elephant Mademoiselle D'Jeck)
Love Me Little, Love Me Long (1859, novel)
A Good Fight and Other Tales (1859)
The Eighth Commandment (1860)
The Cloister and the Hearth (1861)
Hard Cash (1863, novel)
Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy (1866, novel)
Foul Play (1868, novel)
Put Yourself in His Place (1870, novel)
A Terrible Temptation (1871, novel)
Shilly-Shally (1872, unauthorized stage adaptation of Anthony Trollope's Ralph the Heir)
A Simpleton (1873)
The Wandering Heir (1873)
Trade Malice (1875)
A Woman-Hater (1877)
Golden Crowns (1877)
Drink (1879)
The Lyons Mail (1877)
Singleheart and Doubleface (1884, novel)
A Perilous Secret (1884, novel)

Notes

References

Diamond, Michael (2003). Victorian Sensation, Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking, and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Anthem , pp. 209–211,236–239
Reade, Charles L., and Compton Reade (1887). Charles Reade, Dramatist, Novelist, Journalist: A Memoir. London: Chapman and Hall.
The entry contains a detailed assessment of his methods by the anonymous author.

External links

Charles Reade Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Charles Reade Collection at the Harry Ransom Center.