Reade, Charles, 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 Taylor, Tom, 1817–80, English dramatist and editor. His most famous play is Our American Cousin (1858), performed at Ford's Theater in Washington, D. C., when Lincoln was assassinated.
..... Click the link for more information. . 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

(born June 8, 1814, near Ipsden, Oxfordshire, Eng.—died April 11, 1884, London) English novelist and dramatist. Though trained in law and an administrator at Oxford University, he put much of his time and resources into writing and staging his melodramatic plays. His novels expose, with passionate indignation, the social injustices of his times. He is best remembered for the historical romance The Cloister and the Hearth (1861). His other novels include It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1856), attacking prison conditions; Hard Cash (1863), on the abuse of mental patients; and Put Yourself in His Place (1870), about terrorism by trade unionists.