Charles Reade

Biography

Charles Reade (1814–1884) was an English novelist and dramatist, born at Ipsden in Oxfordshire. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he later became a fellow, and he was called to the bar in 1843. Despite that training he chose a literary life, starting in the theatre with comedies and dramas in the early 1850s and turning some of those plays into prose stories. He kept working for the stage throughout his career, and the sense of a scene shows in his prose.

Reade made his name as a novelist with It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1856), a book written to expose abuses in prison discipline. His most famous novel, The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), is a historical story set in the fifteenth century, built from a few lines the humanist Erasmus wrote about his parents. In later novels he used fiction to argue social causes, taking on private lunatic asylums in Hard Cash and trade unions in Put Yourself in His Place. He called many of his books "matter-of-fact romances", because he built their plots from newspaper cuttings he had collected over the years.

A Terrible Temptation (1871) is one of three elaborate studies of character that Reade published in his later years, the others being Griffith Gaunt and A Simpleton. This library holds it, and it shows the careful plotting and attention to real detail that made his name. His novels were widely read and sold well in his lifetime, and he was among the best-paid novelists in England, although many critics thought far less of them than his readers did.

This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.

Books

1. A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day

   by Charles Reade

   A Terrible Temptation: A Story of the Day is an 1871 sensation novel by Charles Reade. It first appeared serially in Cassell's Magazine in England from March 4 to August 26, 1871. Similar to 1866's Griffith Gaunt, the novel received negative reviews in the English press due to…

   Summary from Wikipedia: A Terrible Temptation (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources

• Charles Reade – Wikipedia