SOURCE: "Propaganda and Hard Facts in Charles Reade's Didactic Novels: A Study of It Is Never Too Late to Mend and Hard Cash, " in Renaissance and Modern Studies, Vol. 4, 1960, pp. 135-49.

In the following excerpt, Smith contends that although Reade drew on factual sources for his didactic novels, he exaggerated and introduced melodramatic elements in the tradition of the sensation novel.

'Eccentric fact makes improbable fiction, and improbable fiction is not impressive.'

The Times, 2 Jan. 1864, reviewing Hard Cash.

'All fiction, worth a button, is founded on facts,' wrote Charles Reade in the preface to his novel A Simpleton (1873). To help him write his novels he evolved a'system', which can be summed up as the use of a great deal of fact and of a little imagination. The novel was not his favourite medium, so it was convenient for him to have a rule-of-thumb to work by...