Charles Reade was an English novelist and dramatist, best known for The Cloister and the Hearth.
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29 Facts About Charles Reade
2.
Charles Reade was born at Ipsden, Oxfordshire, to John Reade and Anne Marie Scott-Waring, and had at least four brothers.
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3.
Charles Reade studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, taking his B A in 1835, and became a fellow of his college.
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4.
Charles Reade's name was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1836; he was elected Vinerian Fellow in 1842, and was called to the bar in 1843.
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5.
Charles Reade kept his fellowship at Magdalen all his life but, after taking his degree, he spent most of his time in London.
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6.
Charles 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.
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7.
Charles Reade 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.
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8.
Charles Reade produced an adaptation of this on stage as The Double Marriage in 1867.
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9.
In 1861 Charles 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.
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10.
The novel began life as a serial in Once a Week in 1859 under the title "A Good Fight", but when Charles Reade disagreed with the proprietors of the magazine over some of the contentious subject matter, he abruptly curtailed the serialisation with a false happy ending.
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11.
Charles Reade continued to work on the novel and published it in 1861, thoroughly revised and extended, as The Cloister and the Hearth.
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12.
Charles Reade published three elaborate studies of character: Griffith Gaunt, A Terrible Temptation, A Simpleton .
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13.
Charles Reade wrote this in 1869 in combination with Dion Boucicault with a view to stage adaptation.
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14.
Charles Reade subtitled a number of his novels "A matter-of-fact romance"; this referred to his practice of basing his novels largely on newspaper cuttings, which he began collecting for this purpose in 1848.
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15.
Charles Reade conducted his own research, observing prisons personally, for example, as well as borrowing at times heavily from other novelists' works.
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16.
Charles Reade admitted the public freely to the secrets of his method of composition: he spoke about his method in his prefaces, he introduced himself into one of his novels, as Dr Rolfe in A Terrible Temptation, and in his will, he left his workshop and his accumulation of materials open for inspection for two years after his death.
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17.
Charles Reade's novels were popular, and he was among England's highest-paid novelists.
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18.
Mr Charles 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.
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19.
Mr Charles 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.
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20.
Charles Reade 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.
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21.
Mr Charles Reade is unsurpassed in the second class of English novelists, but he does not belong to the front rank.
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22.
Charles Reade's success has been great in its way, but it is for an age and not for time.
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23.
Charles Reade was a man of what one might call penny-encyclopaedic learning.
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24.
Charles Reade 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.
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25.
Charles Reade strongly defended himself, but invoked standards on literary borrowing that are looser than those of today.
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26.
Charles Reade is frequently discussed in studies of evolving attitudes toward plagiarism.
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27.
Charles Reade is credited with the quote: "Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny".
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28.
Charles Reade cut off relations with her after she eloped at age sixteen with an actor.
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29.
Charles Reade's performed 2000 times in a production of Reade's It Is Never Too Late to Mend.
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