Charles Reade

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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.

Charles Reade 1814-84, English novelist and dramatist. He is noted for his historical romance The Cloister and the Hearth. After being elected a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, he was called to the bar. His interests, however, soon turned to the theater. He achieved his first success with Masks and Faces (1852), written in collaboration with Tom Taylor . The play, concerned with life in the theater, was used as the basis for his first novel, Peg Woffington (1853). An ardent reformer, he began a long series of propagandist novels with It's Never Too Late to Mend (1856), describing the cruelties of prison discipline. Others in the series included Hard Cash (1863), and Put Yourself in His Place (1870). He also wrote the novels Griffith Grant (1866), Foul Play (1869), and A Terrible Temptation (1871). His masterpiece, The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), is a picaresque novel concerning the adventures of Gerard, the father of Erasmus. In 1879 Reade collaborated with Charles Warner in writing Drink, a dramatization of Zola's L'Assommoir.

Bibliography: See biography by M. Elwin (1931); study by W. Burns (1961).

Reade, Charles (1814–84), English novelist, also the author of a number of plays, of which the best known are Masks and Faces (1852), dealing with Garrick and Peg Woffington and written in collaboration with Tom Taylor; The Courier of Lyons (1854), which as The Lyons Mail (1877) provided a marvellous vehicle for Irving in the dual roles of Dubosc and Lesurques, parts played later by Martin-Harvey; and It's Never Too Late to Mend (1864), based on his own novel. He also dramatized Tennyson's Dora (1867), and in 1874 persuaded Ellen Terry to return to the theatre after her liaison with Godwin to take over the part of Philippa Chester in his play The Wandering Heir (1873), first produced with Mrs John Wood in the part. Among his later plays the best was a version of Zola's novel L'Assommoir (1877) as Drink (1879), which he wrote in collaboration with Charles Warner who played Coupeau. Reade was essentially a novelist, and his best work for the theatre was done in collaboration with more theatrically minded men, or based on existing foreign plays.