Charles Reade, 1814-1884

Biographical Materials

• Introduction
• Chronology
• Works

Literary Relations

• Charles Reade and The Moonstone
• Compared to other authors who chose socially significant themes
• Justin McCarthy (1872) on Charles Reade
• Mid- and late-Victorian Fiction

Cultural Contexts

• Artistic Relations
  • Charles Reade purchases Millais's A Dream of the Past
• Victorianism
• Religion and Philosophy
  • Religion in Victorian England
• Science and Technology
• Victorian Psychology

Science and Technology

• History of Early Railways — Technological Innovation and Resistance to it (Hard Cash)

Social and Political Contexts

• Reade on the Railway Mania of the 1840s (Hard Cash)
• Victorian Political History: An Overview
• Victorian Social History: An Overview
• Prison conditions
• Mental hospitals
• Trade Unions

Theme and Technique

• Themes
  • Reade's Novels of Reform
• Characterization
• Imagery, Symbolism, and Motifs
  • Bankruptcy
• Genre and Mode
  • the Problem Novel

On-line Texts and Related Materials

• Arthur's Classic Novels has free versions of a dozen works including The Cloister and the Hearth and Hard Cash
• Mitsuharu Matsuoka's Hyper-Concordance allows word searches in the complete texts of fourteen of Reade's works

---

Last modified 28 September 2004