George Orwell - Fifty Essays (George Orwell) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

That is not to say that Reade's social conscience was not sound so far as it went, and in several minor ways he probably helped to educate public opinion. His attack on the prison system in IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND is relevant to this day, or was so till very recently, and in his medical theories he is said to have been a long way ahead of his time. What he lacked was any notion that the early railway age, with the special scheme of values appropriate to it, was not going to last for ever. This is a little surprising when one remembers that he was the brother of Winwood Reade. However hastily and unbalanced Winwood Reade's MARTYRDOM OF MAN may seem now, it is a book that shows an astonishing width of vision, and it is probably the unacknowledged grandparent of the 'outlines' so popular today. Charles Reade might have written an 'outline' of phrenology, cabinet-making or the habits of whales, but not of human history. He was simply a middle-class gentleman with a little more conscience than most, a scholar who happened to prefer popular science to the classics. Just for that reason he is one of the best 'escape' novelists we have. FOUL PLAY and HARD CASH would be good books to send to a soldier enduring the miseries of trench warfare, for instance. There are no problems in them, no genuine 'messages', merely the fascination of a gifted mind functioning within very narrow limits, and offering as complete a detachment from real life as a game of chess or a jigsaw puzzle.

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