Charles Reade: The British Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Affect of Sensation

Very soon after British sensation writer Charles Reade’s It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1856) was published, stage adaptations by other writers began to appear. Consequently, Reade, who considered himself a dramatist more than a novelist, wrote his own dramatic version of the novel, partly in an attempt to stamp out these unauthorized versions. Nine years after the publication of his novel, Reade’s play opened in London at the Princess Theater-“the home of sensation drama in the West End”—on October 4, 1865 (Barrett 4).