Charles Reade

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 including the civil servant Edward Anderton Reade. His nephews included the influential historian William Winwood Reade and the cricketer Lawrence Reade.

He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he received a BA in 1835, and a BCL with a Vinerian Scholarship in 1842, and a DCL in 1847. He became a fellow of his college, and a dean of arts and a vice-president of the University of Oxford.

His name was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1836 and he was called to the bar in 1843.

Writings

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.