SOURCE: " It Is Never Too Late to Mend: The Immortal Part of the Work," in Charles Reade: A Study in Victorian Authorship, Bookman Associates, 1961, pp. 155-71.

In the following excerpt, Burns discusses the epic qualities of the novel version of It Is Never Too Late to Mend.

In a letter to The Times (August 26, 1871) Reade wrote: "A noble passage in The Times of September 7 or 8, 1853, touched my heart, inflamed my imagination, and was the germ of my first important work."² Taken literally—the way it has so often been taken—this statement implies that Reade had never thought of prisons or prison reform as a subject for a novel before September 7 or 8 (actually September 12) when he encountered the noble passage in The Times detailing atrocities in Birmingham Gaol. But this is not the way Reade intended the statement, or at least it is not the way, in all...