Charles Reade (1814–84) was a British novelist and playwright. His works on the social injustices of his times are noted for his passionate indignation and laborious research. Reade is also remembered for his historical novel The Cloister and the Hearth (1861.)
Reade was born at Ipsden House, Oxfordshire, the youngest of eleven children. After five harrowing years at Iffley School and, in 1831, he gained a scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and in 1835, having taken third-class honours, was duly elected to a lay fellowship. The following year he entered Lincoln’s Inn, and in 1843 was called to the Bar but never practiced.
Reade first wrote for the stage in 1850 and went on to produce 40 dramas. Through one of these dramas, he formed a platonic friendship with Mrs. Seymour, a warmhearted actress who kept house for him from 1854 until her death (1879.)
After 1852, Reade wrote a succession of unsuccessful plays and successful, usually profitable novels. The novels illustrate social injustice and cruelty in one form or another, and his writing is realistic and vivid. They include Peg Wolfington (1852,) Hard Cash (1863,) Foul Play (1869, with Irish actor and playwright Dion Boucicault,) A Terrible Temptation (1871,) and A Woman-hater (1877.)
Reade’s masterpiece was his long historical novel of the 15th century, The Cloister and the Hearth (1861,) which relates the adventures of the father of Desiderius Erasmus as he wavers between religious celibacy and human love.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles Reade
The joys we expect are not so bright, nor the troubles so dark as we fancy they will be.
—Charles Reade
The absent are like children, helpless to defend themselves.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Absence
If you wish to please people, you must begin by understanding them.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Pleasing
Make em laugh; make em cry; make em wait.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers, Writing
Not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers, and martyrs the greater part will never be known till that hour when many that were great shall be small, and the small great.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Greatness, Character, Value of a Day, Time Management
Every lie, great or small, is the brink of a precipice, the depth of which nothing but Omniscience can fathom.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Lying
The green oasis, the little grassy meadow in the wilderness, where, after the week-day’s journey, the pilgrim halts for refreshment and repose.
—Charles Reade
We go on fancying that each person is thinking of us, but they are not; they are like the rest of us—they are thinking of themselves.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Attitude
A wife is essential to great longevity; she is the receptacle of half a man’s cares, and two-thirds of his ill-humor.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Wife
Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Smiles, Smile, Beauty, Smiling
Toward old age both men and women hang to life by their habits.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Age
Marriage is a medicine which acts differently on good men and good women.—She does not love him quite enough—cure,—marriage.—He loves her a little too much—cure,—marriage.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Marriage
Women are self-denying and uncandid; men are self-indulgent and outspoken; and this is the key to a thousand double misunderstandings, for good women are just as stupid in misunderstanding men as good men are in misunderstanding women.
—Charles Reade
Topics: Woman
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