Charles Reade

Charles Reade (1814-1884), British novelist and playwright. Reade studied at Oxford University and was called to the bar, but never practised as a barrister. He began by writing plays, among them Masks and Faces (1852), (written with Tom Taylor) and Gold (1853), but with little success. It was as a novelist that he found instant popularity. Reade was always concerned with social issues and injustices, but he also told a gripping story. He rewrote Masks and Faces as the novel Peg Woffington (1852); Hard Cash (1863) vividly took up the cause of those suffering in private asylums; and A Terrible Temptation (1871) was an autobiographical novel. The most highly acclaimed and enduringly popular of his books has been The Cloister and the Hearth (1861). It is an unlikely but thrilling adventure story, romanticizing the life of the father of the Dutch philosopher Erasmus.