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Plotting in Reade's Novels
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Charles Reade is not a great novelist, but he is a great storyteller, a master of “brute incident.” Critics recur in praise to this or that scene or group of scenes in his fiction. They prize highly the narratives relating the voyage home of the “Agra” in Hard Cash, and the boat race and bursting of the reservoir in Put Yourself in His Place; the prison scenes in It is Never too Late to Mend; and many of the episodes in The Cloister and the Hearth; the encounter with the mother bear robbed of her cubs, the fight with the “Abbot” and his mates. Yet, as with all the Victorian novelists, it is difficult to pick out from his novels any—except, perhaps, The Cloister and the Hearth—that satisfy through and through.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932
References
1 Chap. xvii.
2 Chap. ii.
3 Chap. xxxviii.
4 The Autobiography of a Thief, second paragraph.
5 Cf. Hard Cash, chap. i with Readiana: The Dark Places of the Land (1858); and see Love Me Little, Love Me Long, Preface and chap. xi, xii.
6 Chap. xi.
7 Chap. vi.
8 Chap. v.—His notebooks contain many suggestions for shortening others' fiction, for instance, Moby Dich. He meditated a series of such abridgments. See my “Charles Reade's Notebooks,” Studies in Philology, xxvii, (1), pp. 78, 89.
9 Chap. ix.
10 For sources, see the edition ed. by C. B. Wheeler, (Oxford press, 1915); and particularly Reade's list in a letter: Annie T. Fields, “An Acquaintance with Charles Reade,” Century (Nov., 1884).
11 See Readiana: The Dark Places of the Land. For other sources, see my article on the notebooks, pp. 80, 81. Cf. note 8.
12 See in the Overland Monthly, xi, 345 the article by C. L. Connelly: The Historical Basis of Griffith Gaunt. For other sources, cf. my article on the notebooks cited above, pp. 67–68, 69–70. The story of Wilkie Collins there referred to is The Queen of Hearts: Brother Griffith's Story of a Plot in Private Life. The resemblances are obvious, the name “Griffith” significant. Reade may have received permission from Collins to alter his plot, for Reade and Collins were friendly; and shortly after the publication of Griffith Gaunt, Collins criticised at Reade's request the plotting of Put Yourself in His Place, some parts of which Reade sent him in manuscript. That Reade may even have paid for the use of Collins's story is suggested by the following notebook entry, under the head of “Stories dramatizanda”: “Treat with Collins for his rogue. I take him to Australia. Make him the girl's servant.” (Notebook 5g, p. 1) The reference is to Collins's A Rogue's Life. Reade had previously suggested to Collins such an enlargement of his story. See Collins's Introductory Words to his novel. Reade did not follow up this idea for a play; but there may be a parallelism between his intention here and his action before. For notebook sources of Griffith Gaunt, see my article on the notebooks, pp. 85, 86, 87, 91–92, 93. The cause célèbre of Martin Guerre also contributed to the plot: particularly the confusion of identity caused by moles on the forehead. For Reade's interest in this case, see his Good Stories of Man and Other Animals: Doubles.
13 The principal materials for the study of the baffling problem of the sources of Foul Play are Reade's defence against plagiarism from Fournier and Meyer's Le Portefeuille Rouge, in Readiana: The Sham Sample Swindle; my article on the notebooks, which quotes the Insurance Plot, pp. 98–100; newspaper and other records of the contemporary interest in coffin-ships, stimulated by Samuel Plimsoll. Use of other material from the notebooks is indicated in my article on them, p. 86.
14 For other sources, see my article on the notebooks, pp. 86, 89, 91–92, 93–94, 95.
15 See my article on the notebooks, pp. 69–70, 75, 80, 85, 86–87, 102; and Readiana: “Facts Must Be Faced.” The latter should be consulted also for information about the inception of It is Never too Late to Mend, Hard Cash, Put Yourself in His Place.
16 For Reade's list of sources see the preface to the 1873 edition. See also my article on the notebooks, pp. 94, 96, 98–99.
17 For Reade's list of sources, see Trade Malice.
18 D.N.B.: Edward Anderdon Reade.
19 See my article on the notebooks, p. 83, for evidence of this project; and pp. 102, 105 for minor sources.
20 For Reade's use of these terms, see the notebooks passim, and Readiana: The Sham Sample Swindle.
21 Notebook 42, p. 190.
22 Chap. xxxii.
23 Readiana: The Rights and the Wrongs of Authors, Ninth Letter.
24 Notebook Red Digest, p. 167 over.
25 Notebook 5g, p. 11.
26 Notebook 5g, p. 22.
27 Chap. lxxiii.
28 Chap. xiv.
29 Chap. xxxi or xxxiii, according to edition.
30 Chap. xiii.
31 Chap. iii.
32 Readiana: The Sham Sample Swindle.
33 Chap. xv or xvii, according to edition.
34 Readiana: The Sham Sample Swindle.
35 Good Stories of Man and Other Animals.
36 Chap. xiv.
37 Chap. xxix.
38 In an article on Unique and Repeated Situations in Reade's Fiction.
39 See my, “The Stage in Reade's Novels,” SP xxvii (4), 680–681.
40 Chap. xxxviii.
41 Chap. vi.
42 The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. li.
43 Chap. x. Cf. A. Perilous Secret, chap. i: “litte dreaming … what a chain they were weaving … this little business the first link.”
44 Chap. lxxvii.
45 Chap. xxviii.
46 Chap. xxxix.
47 Chap. liii.
48 Chap. xx.
49 Chap. xxvi.
50 Chap. xxv.
51 Chap. iii, xxxii.
52 Chap. xxxii. For other anonymous letters from the villain to the heroine see Hard Cash, chap. xlix, and Foul Play, chap. lxiii.
53 Chap. xxxiii.
54 Chap. xxxv.
55 Chap. xlvii.
56 Chap. xl.
57 Chap. xxviii.
58 Chap. lv.
59 Chap. lxix.
60 Chap. ix, x.
61 Chap. xcvi.
62 Chap. ii.
63 Chap. xcv.
64 Chap. xlvii.
65 Chap. lii.
66 Chap. xv.
67 Chap. xliv.
68 Chap. xlix.
69 Griffith Gaunt, chap. xi, xxxii.
70 Chap. i, v.
71 Griffith Gaunt, chap. xx; Put Yourself in His Place, chap. xxiv.
72 See the beginnings of Chap. xxviii and xxxv.
73 Other summaries appear in Griffith Gaunt, chap. vi; Foul Play, chap. lii; A Woman Eater, chap. xxii or xxiv, according to edition; Put Yourself in His Place, chap. xix.
74 Chap. xxxiii.
75 Chap. xl.
76 Chap. x.
77 Chap. xi.
78 Chap. xii-xiv.
79 He refers to “dear Smollett” in It is Never too Late to Mend, chap. xxxvi.
80 The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. xlvii.
81 Chap. v.
82 The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. lx. Behind—that is, coming up in a series.
83 The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. vii.
84 Hard Cash, chap. xlix.
85 Ibid., chap. ii.
86 Ibid., chap. xx.
87 Ibid., chap. xiii.
87a Chap. xxxiii.
88 Chap. lx.
89 Chap. xiii.
90 Chap. xxxviii.
91 Chap. xii.
92 The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. xxxii.
93 Chap. xlviii, lii, lxv, lxxv, lxxxii.
94 See Hard Cash, chap. xiii, xxx; Foul Play, chap. ii; Put Yourself in His Place, chap. xv; A Wandering Heir, chap. ii; Singleheart, and Doubleface, chap. i.
95 Chap. viii. See also The Cloister and the Hearth, chap. xxxv.
96 Griffith Gaunt, chap. xxvii.
97 Chap. lxvi.
98 Part ii.
99 Notebook Red Digest, p. 136.
100 Love Me Little, Love Me Long, chap. iii.
101 Chap. vii-viii.
102 Chap. xi, xiv-xv.
103 Chap. iii-iv.
104 White Lies, chap. xvi, xviii; xx-xxi; xxv, xxvii. Love Me Little, Love Me Long, chap. vii, x; xxvi, xxviii. Hard Cash, chap. ii; xvi; xvi end, xix; xxix; xxxiii-xxxiv; xxxv-xxxvi; xxxix-xl; xliv-xlv; liii. Griffith Gaunt, chap. v, xxxiv. A Terrible Temptation, chap. xv-xvi; Singleheart, and Doubleface, chap ix; A Perilous Secret, chap. xxii-xxiii
105 Chap. xxii.
106 It is Never too Late to Mend.
107 Ibid, chap. xxvii-xxxi; xxxiii-xxxv.
108 Notebook 42, p. 207.
109 Notebook Journalium, p. 54.
110 Chap. xxiv.
111 Chap. xliv.
112 Chap. lxix. See also The Autobiography of a Thief: “I had at one time twelve hundred pounds in money and gold-dust, but I wasted the greater part, and by a just retribution was robbed of the rest.”
113 Chap. xv.
114 Notebook Digest, p. 68.
115 Notebook W. B. Reade, p. 19.
116 A Woman Hater, chap. xxix, xxx or xxxxi, xxxii—according to edition.
117 Notebook 42, p. 207.
117a Put Youself in His Place, Chap. xl.
118 Put Yourself in His Place, chap. xlviii.
119 Chap. xl.
120 Chap. liv.
121 Chap. lxix. Retribution is also important to Wylie of the same novel. Before helping to wreck a ship for insurance, he thought that “Retribution, if it came at all, would not be severe, and would be three or four years coming.” (Chap. ix). But, afterwards, when death from thirst seemed imminent: “One word was ever present to his mind; and seemed written in fire on the night of clouds, and howled in his ears by the wind—Retribution.” (Chap. xiii.)
122 Chap. xx.
123 Chap. liii.
124 Chap. lxix.
125 Chap. xxxv.
126 Chap. ix.
127 Chap. lxxii.
128 Chap. lxxii.
129 Chap. xci.