SOURCE: "Novels: On Social Issues," in Charles Reade, Twayne, 1976, pp. 104-34.

In the following excerpt. Smith discusses Reade's general approach to writing novels about social issues and discusses specific aspects of It Is Never Too Late to Mend.

The last sentence of Put Yourself in His Place reveals Charles Reade's intention for his novels about current social issues: " … I have taken a few undeniable truths out of many, and have laboured to make my readers realize those appalling facts of the day which most men know, but not one in a thousand comprehends, and not one in a hundred thousand realizes, until fiction—which, whatever you may have been told to the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest, and greatest of all the arts—comes to his aid, studies, penetrates, digests the hard facts of chronicles and bluebooks, and makes their dry bones live." Reade's friend Wilkie Collins...