Although famed for his meticulously researched medieval masterpiece 'The Cloister and the Hearth', Charles Reade also penned some of the Victorian era’s most gripping sensation novels, creating controversial works that strove to end social evils and fight injustice. This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works of Charles Reade, with numerous illustrations, rare texts appearing in digital print for the first time, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Reade's life and works * Concise introductions to the novels and other texts * ALL 15 novels, with individual contents tables * Images of how the books were first printed, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Famous works such as THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH are fully illustrated with their original artwork * Rare story collections and plays appearing here for the first time in digital print * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories * Easily locate the short stories you want to read * Includes Reade's non-fiction seminal work on copyright: THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT – available no where else * Special criticism section, with five essays evaluating Reade’s contribution to literature * Features two biographies, including the seminal memoir compiled by Reade’s family - discover Reade's literary life * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Novels PEG WOFFINGTON CHRISTIE JOHNSTONE IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND WHITE LIES ‘LOVE ME LITTLE LOVE ME LONG.’ THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH VERY HARD CASH GRIFFITH GAUNT FOUL PLAY PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION A SIMPLETON THE WANDERING HEIR A WOMAN HATER A PERILOUS SECRET The Tales THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH THE BOX TUNNEL CREAM A GOOD FIGHT SINGLE HEART AND DOUBLE FACE GOOD STORIES OF MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS THE JILT AND OTHER STORIES The Short Stories LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER The Plays THE COURIER OF LYONS MASKS AND FACES TWO LOVES AND A LIFE IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND The Non-Fiction THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT TRADE MALICE A HERO AND A MARTYR The Criticism DICKENS, READE, AND COLLINS: SENSATION NOVELISTS by Walter C. Phillips CHARLES READE by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch CHARLES READE by William Dean Howells CHARLES READE by David Christie Murray LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES READE by Kinahan Cornwallis The Biographies CHARLES READE: DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, JOURNALIST CHARLES READE AS I KNEW HIM by John Coleman Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles

At two o’clock, one fine day in June, there were two strangers in the salle a’ manger, seated at small tables a long way apart, and wholly absorbed in their own business. One was a lady about twenty-four years old, who, in the present repose of her features, looked comely, sedate, and womanly, but not the remarkable person she really was. Her forehead high and white, but a little broader than sculptors affect; her long hair, coiled tight, in a great many smooth snakes, upon her snowy nape, was almost flaxen, yet her eyebrows and long lashes not pale but a reddish brown; her gray eyes large and profound; her mouth rather large, beautifully shaped, amiable, and expressive, but full of resolution; her chin a little broad; her neck and hands admirably white and polished. She was an Anglo-Dane--her father English. If you ask me what she was doing, why--hunting; and had been, for some days, in all the inns of Homburg. She had the visitors’ book, and was going through the names of the whole year, and studying each to see whether it looked real or assumed. Interspersed were flippant comments, and verses adapted to draw a smile of amusement or contempt; but this hunter passed them all over as nullities: the steady pose of her head, the glint of her deep eye, and the set of her fine lips showed a soul not to be diverted from its object.

In Medical Women and Victorian Fiction, Kristine Swenson explores the cultural intersections of fiction, feminism, and medicine during the second half of the nineteenth century in Britain and her colonies by looking at the complex and reciprocal relationship between women and medicine in Victorian culture. Her examination centers around two distinct though related figures: the Nightingale nurse and the New Woman doctor. The medical women in the fiction of Elizabeth Gaskell (Ruth), Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White), Dr. Margaret Todd (Mona McLean, Medical Student), Hilda Gregg (Peace with Honour), and others are analyzed in relation to nonfictional discussions of nurses and women doctors in medical publications, nursing tracts, feminist histories, and newspapers. Victorian anxieties over sexuality, disease, and moral corruption came together most persistently around the figure of a prostitute. However, Swenson takes as her focus for this volume an opposing figure, the medical woman, whom Victorians deployed to combat these social ills. As symbols of traditional female morality informed and transformed by the new social and medical sciences, representations of medical women influenced public debate surrounding women's education and employment, the Contagious Diseases Acts, and the health of the empire. At the same time, the presence of these educated, independent women, who received payment for performing tasks traditionally assigned to domestic women or servants, inevitably altered the meaning of womanhood and the positions of other women in Victorian culture. Swenson challenges more conventional histories of the rise of the actual nurse and the woman doctor by treating as equally important the development of cultural representations of these figures.