Charles Reade, 1940 [L.m./F.s.: 2019-12-29 / 0.15 KiB]
‘What is the attraction of Reade? At bottom it is the same charm as one finds in R. Austin Freeman's detective stories or Lieutenant-Commander Gould's collections of curiosities — the charm of useless knowledge. Reade was a man of what one might call penny-encyclopædic learning. He possessed vast stocks of disconnected information which a lively narrative gift allowed him to cram into books which would at any rate pass as novels...’