Reade, Charles

Reade, Charles (1814–84), became a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, with which he was long associated. He began his literary career publishing a stage version of Smollett's Peregrine Pickle (1851); Masks and Faces (perf. 1852) became the novel Peg Woffington (1853). Christie Johnstone (1853), the first of his ‘reforming’ novels, was followed by It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1856) and Gold! (1856), a play later converted into the novel Foul Play (1868–9). In 1854 he met the actress Mrs Seymour, with whom he lived until her death in 1879. The Autobiography of a Thief and Jack of All Trades (both 1858) were followed by his best-remembered work, The Cloister and the Hearth (1861). Hard Cash (1863), Griffith Gaunt (1866), and Put Yourself in his Place (1870) are all reforming novels. A long collaboration with Boucicault produced many other plays and adaptions. After the death of Mrs Seymour he wrote little, turned to religion, and gave up theatrical management. Reade enjoyed great fame, and was accepted as the natural successor to Dickens, but his reputation has now dimmed. His expression of sexual frustration and hatred of celibacy, a dominant theme in many of his works, was much stifled by the proprieties of the time, and his passion for realistic detail at times overwhelms his considerable narrative powers.