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It is Never Too Late to Mend
A ruthless squire becomes obsessed with a younger woman and conspires against her lover, George Fielding, so that the squire can win her. With the squire's financial pressure turned up on his family, George goes to Australia to earn money enough to marry his girl. In the meantime, a young man named Tom Robinson is sent to prison for stealing. For his somewhat minor offense, he suffers severe mistreatment in prison. It Is Never Too Late to Mend was written in the 1850s to shed light on abuses in British prison discipline and the treatment of criminals, but is also an adventure yarn set in the gold fields of Australia.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1856
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About the author
Charles Reade
841 books38 followersCharles Reade was an English novelist and dramatist, best known for The Cloister and the Hearth. He fell out of fashion by the turn of the century - "it is unusual to meet anyone who has voluntarily read him," wrote George Orwell in an essay on Reade - but during the 19th century Reade was one of England's most popular novelists. He was not highly regarded by critics.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 26, 2018
It Is Never Too Late to Bend … a Storyline
You might especially want to bend a storyline in order to make it wrap around a message and bring it home more easily to a reader, particularly when the message is …
But wait, let’s first of all begin with the story told in Charles Reade’s first major novel, which goes by the rather pretentious title It Is Never Too Late to Mend and which was published in 1856. At the centre of this novel is, supposedly, the rivalry between two men who love the same woman. Our hero is the luckless farmer George Fielding, an honest young man, whose dream is to win the hand of young Susan Merton, his cousin. Susan’s father, however, is a very egoistic man and feels no inclination to tie the future of his daughter to the life of man whose worldly prospects shine but dimly. “Earn a thousand pounds before I give you my daughter in wedlock!” – This is old Merton’s credo, and so George eventually leaves England in order to try his luck in Australia, where he starts breeding sheep and cattle, with ups and downs, and more of the latter than the former, at that.
While George is in Australia, the local squire, John Meadows, a ruthless businessman, who is also in love with Susan, tries to improve his standing with the lady by telling her about Australia and cheering her up, at the same time intercepting letters between Susan and George and secretly becoming her father’s creditor. However, unfortunately for him, he has made a bitter enemy of a Jewish usurer, Isaac Levi, whom he even tried to beat in a fit of rage. George’s interference in Levi’s favour determines the latter to thwart all of Meadows’s plans of marrying Susan, enabling Mr. Levi to combine gratefulness with vindictiveness.
One other strand of the plot is centred on Tom Robinson, a rather unprincipled, but not unlikeable petty criminal, who is sent to prison and is reformed by the untiring idealism of the prison chaplain Mr. Eden. Robinson later joins George Fielding in Australia, helping him dig for gold.
It is always a pleasure to read Charles Reade, who was an extremely original narrator and who put a lot of research into his novels, thereby giving a very detailed view on Victorian life, in this case on the penal system of his home country and on the Australian gold rush. Apart from that, Reade manages to create very interesting characters: Mr. Eden, who is based on a real-life chaplain, may be too good to be true, or at least interesting, but John Meadows is a villain with certain principles, and as a reader you will definitely find yourself rooting for Tom Robinson and his changeful personal development, asking yourself whether the man will fall back into his old, unprincipled ways or whether he will remain true to the promise he made his saviour Mr. Eden. Then there is also Isaac Levi, who partly seems to be yet another literary Jewish stereotype – e.g. in his vengefulness with regard to Meadows and in his ability to outwit others – but who also has lots of redeeming qualities. Nowadays, Reade would certainly never get away with creating such a character, laying himself open to the charge of pandering to certain anti-Semitic prejudices, but it is quite obvious that the author wanted to oppose the tendency of his time to depict Jewish people as out-and-out villains. There are, in fact, quite some passages and authorial comments that would make a modern reader feel uncomfortable but still, his Mr. Levi is by far a much more interesting character than, let’s say, Charles Dickens’s angelic Mr. Riah, another character meant to atone for anti-Semitic stereotyping in popular culture.
The great catch with this novel, however, is that it all too frequently finds its author lecturing down on the reader, going on and on about the necessity of reforming the prison regime. Now, given the inhuman side of the silent system, of isolating prisoners and of making them do useless labour, with a view of disciplining them, Mr. Reade is definitely right about whatever he has to say – but he says it too often and in too many words. After George Fielding has left for Australia, and Susan has made the inspiring acquaintance of Mr. Eden, the plot suddenly focuses on a prison where it will keep us readers for quite a while, making us experience a sense of helplessness and claustrophobia. The only problem is that an entire set of new characters are introduced and that this plot strand threatens to hijack the whole novel, turning the tale, at times, into a pamphlet on prison reform.
Mr. Reade is clearly impassioned with his message here, bent on social reform and doing some good, but his social impetus is like a poor player who has all too long fretted his hour upon the stage of the tale, or like an Incredible, and very angry, Hulk, all sinewy and trembling, gate-crashing a tea party consisting of elderly ladies, where he might be doing some good in his own way but inevitably be felt to be sorely out of place. In short, from this moment on, the novel seems to be falling apart, and it never wholly recovers its unity from the shock. Even in his Australia chapters, the author all too often gives in to his inclination to meandering, and we feel that Reade is not a really good hand at wielding different plot strands elegantly. Just compare his heavy-handed clumsiness to how Dickens managed to introduce social criticism in his later novels, and you will see what put me off this novel to a certain extent.
All in all, It Is Never Too Late to Mend is quite an entertaining book but it certainly shows why its author, for all his originality, cannot be ranked among the finest of Victorian writers.
You might especially want to bend a storyline in order to make it wrap around a message and bring it home more easily to a reader, particularly when the message is …
But wait, let’s first of all begin with the story told in Charles Reade’s first major novel, which goes by the rather pretentious title It Is Never Too Late to Mend and which was published in 1856. At the centre of this novel is, supposedly, the rivalry between two men who love the same woman. Our hero is the luckless farmer George Fielding, an honest young man, whose dream is to win the hand of young Susan Merton, his cousin. Susan’s father, however, is a very egoistic man and feels no inclination to tie the future of his daughter to the life of man whose worldly prospects shine but dimly. “Earn a thousand pounds before I give you my daughter in wedlock!” – This is old Merton’s credo, and so George eventually leaves England in order to try his luck in Australia, where he starts breeding sheep and cattle, with ups and downs, and more of the latter than the former, at that.
While George is in Australia, the local squire, John Meadows, a ruthless businessman, who is also in love with Susan, tries to improve his standing with the lady by telling her about Australia and cheering her up, at the same time intercepting letters between Susan and George and secretly becoming her father’s creditor. However, unfortunately for him, he has made a bitter enemy of a Jewish usurer, Isaac Levi, whom he even tried to beat in a fit of rage. George’s interference in Levi’s favour determines the latter to thwart all of Meadows’s plans of marrying Susan, enabling Mr. Levi to combine gratefulness with vindictiveness.
One other strand of the plot is centred on Tom Robinson, a rather unprincipled, but not unlikeable petty criminal, who is sent to prison and is reformed by the untiring idealism of the prison chaplain Mr. Eden. Robinson later joins George Fielding in Australia, helping him dig for gold.
It is always a pleasure to read Charles Reade, who was an extremely original narrator and who put a lot of research into his novels, thereby giving a very detailed view on Victorian life, in this case on the penal system of his home country and on the Australian gold rush. Apart from that, Reade manages to create very interesting characters: Mr. Eden, who is based on a real-life chaplain, may be too good to be true, or at least interesting, but John Meadows is a villain with certain principles, and as a reader you will definitely find yourself rooting for Tom Robinson and his changeful personal development, asking yourself whether the man will fall back into his old, unprincipled ways or whether he will remain true to the promise he made his saviour Mr. Eden. Then there is also Isaac Levi, who partly seems to be yet another literary Jewish stereotype – e.g. in his vengefulness with regard to Meadows and in his ability to outwit others – but who also has lots of redeeming qualities. Nowadays, Reade would certainly never get away with creating such a character, laying himself open to the charge of pandering to certain anti-Semitic prejudices, but it is quite obvious that the author wanted to oppose the tendency of his time to depict Jewish people as out-and-out villains. There are, in fact, quite some passages and authorial comments that would make a modern reader feel uncomfortable but still, his Mr. Levi is by far a much more interesting character than, let’s say, Charles Dickens’s angelic Mr. Riah, another character meant to atone for anti-Semitic stereotyping in popular culture.
The great catch with this novel, however, is that it all too frequently finds its author lecturing down on the reader, going on and on about the necessity of reforming the prison regime. Now, given the inhuman side of the silent system, of isolating prisoners and of making them do useless labour, with a view of disciplining them, Mr. Reade is definitely right about whatever he has to say – but he says it too often and in too many words. After George Fielding has left for Australia, and Susan has made the inspiring acquaintance of Mr. Eden, the plot suddenly focuses on a prison where it will keep us readers for quite a while, making us experience a sense of helplessness and claustrophobia. The only problem is that an entire set of new characters are introduced and that this plot strand threatens to hijack the whole novel, turning the tale, at times, into a pamphlet on prison reform.
Mr. Reade is clearly impassioned with his message here, bent on social reform and doing some good, but his social impetus is like a poor player who has all too long fretted his hour upon the stage of the tale, or like an Incredible, and very angry, Hulk, all sinewy and trembling, gate-crashing a tea party consisting of elderly ladies, where he might be doing some good in his own way but inevitably be felt to be sorely out of place. In short, from this moment on, the novel seems to be falling apart, and it never wholly recovers its unity from the shock. Even in his Australia chapters, the author all too often gives in to his inclination to meandering, and we feel that Reade is not a really good hand at wielding different plot strands elegantly. Just compare his heavy-handed clumsiness to how Dickens managed to introduce social criticism in his later novels, and you will see what put me off this novel to a certain extent.
All in all, It Is Never Too Late to Mend is quite an entertaining book but it certainly shows why its author, for all his originality, cannot be ranked among the finest of Victorian writers.
August 26, 2014
True rating: 4.5 stars.
A third of this long, absorbing, ‘sensation’ novel takes place in a prison, exposing the horrific tortures of the prison system as it was at that time in Victorian England. (Ever the social do-gooder, Reade screams for reform.) Another third carries us to the front lines of the Australian gold rush, vividly depicted in all its greedy and gory glory. The other third follows the machinations of a man back home in England who’s driven to evil by the desire to possess another man’s betrothed. The three threads share common characters to some extent, and are tied together wonderfully in the final chapters.
The novel lacks nothing in plot or characterization, and is propelled by Reade’s usual solid, and sometimes quirky, writing and inventive storytelling. There are numerous unforgettable scenes, especially at the prison, and many strong characters, both good and wicked, who seem to live and breathe before our eyes. Outstanding!
A third of this long, absorbing, ‘sensation’ novel takes place in a prison, exposing the horrific tortures of the prison system as it was at that time in Victorian England. (Ever the social do-gooder, Reade screams for reform.) Another third carries us to the front lines of the Australian gold rush, vividly depicted in all its greedy and gory glory. The other third follows the machinations of a man back home in England who’s driven to evil by the desire to possess another man’s betrothed. The three threads share common characters to some extent, and are tied together wonderfully in the final chapters.
The novel lacks nothing in plot or characterization, and is propelled by Reade’s usual solid, and sometimes quirky, writing and inventive storytelling. There are numerous unforgettable scenes, especially at the prison, and many strong characters, both good and wicked, who seem to live and breathe before our eyes. Outstanding!
October 29, 2017
Altogether a much better novel than anyone seems to give it credit for. The prison chapters are intense and powerful; the Australian material is unusual and absorbing. A major influence on Marcus Clarke's classic Australian novel His Natural Life, which I also heartily recommend.
September 18, 2022
"The Cloister and the Hearth" is a hard act to follow. Parts of this novel were good, I don't think I'll easily forget the prison scenes, for instance, but no comparison to TCATH.
January 7, 2009
Very pleasantly surprised at this book, great story lines swirled together.
August 25, 2010
Perfect read (Reade)
March 8, 2025
A nice gem from 19th century British literature. I happened upon the book by accident, never hearing of the author before, but the book is out there. My reading began without expecting much but the storyline and characters were quite interesting. The perspicacity and grammar were relatively simple but I did enjoy the plot. The main characters are star-crossed lovers with the man going to Australia to find his fortune in gold in order to afford marrying the woman who is being deceived by another man who wants to marry her himself.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews