The Cloister and the Hearth, Volume Two of Four by Charles Reade, Fiction, Classics 12+

📕 Cloister and the Hearth, Volume II"The Cloister and the Hearth" is Charles Reade's greatest work--and, I believe, the greatest historical novel in the language. . . . "One can only say that this great writer--there is no greater praise--paints women as they are, men as they are, things as they are. What we call genius is first the power of seeing men, women, and things as they are--most of us, being without genius, are purblind--and then the power of showing them by means of "invention"--by the grafting of "invention" upon fact. No man has shown greater power of grasping fact and of weaving invention upon it than Charles Reade." -- from Walter Besant's introduction