Charles Reade

Born near Ipsden, Oxfordshire, on June 8, 1814, Charles Reade was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was later called to the bar, though literature and the stage became his real career. He wrote both plays and novels, and his early theatrical success helped shape the vivid, scene-driven style that readers came to associate with his fiction.

Reade became well known in the mid-19th century for works including Peg Woffington, It Is Never Too Late to Mend, Hard Cash, and the historical novel The Cloister and the Hearth. Contemporary and later reference works describe him as a writer who combined energetic plotting with painstaking research, often using his stories to attack abuses in prisons, asylums, and other institutions.

He died in London on April 11, 1884. Today he is remembered as a forceful Victorian storyteller whose books joined entertainment with reforming passion, giving many of them an urgency that still stands out.