A Simpleton [Hardcover]

Charles Reade (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2002

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 388 pages
• Publisher: IndyPublish.com (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1404332286
• ISBN-13: 978-1404332287
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,607,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Subtltey is not Reade's forte, August 21, 2006

By 

Bomojaz (South Central PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Simpleton (Paperback)

The basic theme of this novel is how a worldly, intelligent man comes to appreciate the qualities of his extravagant though sweetly innocent wife, whom everyone calls "the simpleton." Dr. Christopher Staines marries Rosa Lusignan, a poor manager of money and all things domestic; Staines is forced to drive a hack incognito at night to make ends meet. When this fails, he sails to South Africa with a wealthy family as caretaker of their ill daughter. Along the way it's reported that Staines falls overboard and drowns. When he reaches Cape Town he decides to let the rumor of his death stand as fact so that Rosa can enjoy the life insurance money due her. But then the unscrupulous Reginald Falcon, aware of the situation, sails to England to get Rosa to marry him for her money. He wins her by faking the kidnapping of her son and then returning him to her posing as his rescuer. Feeling obligated to Falcon now, she is just about to succumb to him when Staines returns and saves his wife.

No Reade novel would be complete without his advocating certain social issues; here he speaks out for the importance of having life insurance, against the difficulties of establishing a medical practice, for alternate means of mining diamonds, and even a warning against the wearing of tight corsets. Sometimes Reade can be incongruous or careless when it comes to practical plot matters: Falcon is married all the time he's pursuing Rosa (in fact, his wife comes chasing after him like a sick puppy - perhaps the most incredible scenes in the book), and Staines's change of heart about the "advantages" of having a "simpleton" wife comes out of the blue and seems to be there for effect only.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is its Preface where Reade defends himself against the charge of plagiarism: "All fiction, worth a button, is founded on facts; and it doesn't matter one straw whether the facts are taken from personal experiences, hearsay, or printed books; only those books must not be works of fiction." In other words, he believed all facts are in the public domain and therefore were at his disposal for use in his novels. Here he defends the extraordinary amount of research he conducted before writing each novel. No novel by Reade was ever totally worthless; this one falls somewhere in the middle rank of his works.