Charles Reade (8 June 1814 – 11 April 1884) was a British novelist and dramatist, best remembered today for the historical romance The Cloister and the Hearth (1861). He built his reputation on campaigning fiction — It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1856) attacked prison conditions and Hard Cash (1863) went after private lunatic asylums — though he rated Griffith Gaunt (1866) his own best book. A Simpleton (1873), the novel that carries this line, is one of his later society stories, and its dialogue has the brisk comic snap that keeps getting mistaken for his more famous contemporary.