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READE, CHARLES (1814-1884)
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See also:READE, See also: He followed this up in the same See also:year with See also:Christie See also:Johnstone, a See also:close study of Scottish See also:fisher folk, an extraordinary tour de force for the son of an English squire, whether we consider the See also:dialect or the skill with which he enters into See also:alien habits of thought. In 1854 he produced, in See also:con-junction with Tom Taylor, Two Loves and a Life, and The See also: Outside the See also:line of these moral and occasional See also:works Reade produced three elaborate studies of See also:character, —See also:Griffith Gaunt (1866), A Terrible Temptation (1871), A Simpleton (1893). The first of these was in his own See also:opinion the best of his novels, and his own opinion was probably right. He was wrong, however, in his own conception of his See also:powers as a dramatist. At intervals throughout his literary career he sought to gratify his dramatic ambition, See also:hiring a theatre and engaging a See also:company for the See also:representation of his own plays. An example of his persistency was seen in the See also:case of Foul Play. He wrote this in 1869 in See also:combination with Mr See also:Dion See also:Boucicault with a view to stage See also:adaptation. The play was more or less a failure; but he produced another version alone in 1877, under the title of A Scuttled Ship, and the failure was pronounced. His greatest success as a dramatist attended his last See also:attempt—Drink—an adaptation of See also:Zola's L'Assommoir, produced in 1879. In that year his friend Laura Seymour, who had kept See also:house for him since 1854, died. Reade's See also:health failed from that time, and he died on the 11th of See also:April 1884, leaving behind him a completed novel, A Perilous See also:Secret, which showed no falling off in the arts of See also:weaving a complicated See also:plot and devising thrilling situations. Reade was an See also:amateur of the See also:violin, and among his works is an See also:essay on See also:Cremona violins with the title, A Lost Art Revived. It was characteristic of Reade's open and combative nature that he admitted the public freely to the secrets of his method of See also:composition. He spoke about his method in his prefaces; he introduced himself into one of his novels—" Dr Rolfe " in A Terrible Temptation; and by his will he See also:left his workshop and his See also:accumulation of materials open for inspection for two years after his See also:death. He had collected an enormous See also:mass of materials for his study of human nature, from See also:personal observation, from See also:newspapers, books of travel, See also:blue-books of commissions of inquiry, from See also:miscellaneous See also:reading. This vast collection was classified and arranged in huge ledgers and notebooks. He had planned a See also:great work on " the See also:wisdom and folly of nations," dealing with social, See also:political and domestic details, and it was chiefly for this that his collection was destined, but in passing he found the materials useful as a See also:store of incidents and suggestions. A See also:collector of the See also:kind was See also:bound to be systematic, otherwise his collection would have fallen into confusion, and Reade's collection contains many curiosities in See also:classification and tabulation. On the value of this method for his art there has been much discussion, the prevalent opinion being that his See also:imagination was overwhelmed and stifled by it. He himself maintained the contrary; and it must be admitted that a priori critics have not rightly understood the use that he made of his laboriously collected facts. He did not merely See also:shovel the contents of his notebooks into his novels; they served rather as an See also:atmosphere of reality in which he worked, so that his novels were like pictures painted in the open See also:air. His imagination worked freely among them and was quickened rather than impeded by their suggestions of things suited to the purpose in See also:hand; and it is probably to his close and See also:constant contact with facts, acting on an imagination naturally fertile, that we owe his marvellous abundance of incident. Even in his novels of character there is no meditative and See also:analytic stagnation; the development of character is shown through a rapid unceasing progression of significant facts. This rapidity of See also:movement was perhaps partly the result of his dramatic studies; it was probably in See also:writing for the stage that he learned the value of keeping the attention of his readers incessantly on the alert. The hankering after stage effect, while it saved him from dullness, often betrayed him into rough exaggeration, especially in his comic scenes. But the gravest defect in his work is a defect of See also:temper. His view of human life, especially of the life of See also:women, is almost brutal; his knowledge of frailties and vices is obtruded with repellent force; and he cannot, with all his skill as a story-See also:teller, be numbered among the great artists who warm the See also:heart and help to improve the conduct. But as a moral satirist, which was the See also:function he professed over and above that of a story-teller, he did See also:good service, both indirectly in his novels and directly in his own name.
See Charles L. Reade and See also:Compton Reade, Charles Reade, a Memoir (2 vols., 1887); A. C. See also:Swinburne, Miscellanies (1886) ; and some recollections by See also: Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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