A Terrible Temptation was published by Chapman & Hall in 1871, and it is a characteristic Reade sensation novel — a complex plot driven by fraud, conspiracy, and institutional corruption, built on the documentary research that was his trademark.
Sir Charles Doolittle Bassett is a young baronet who breaks off his relationship with the beautiful courtesan Rhoda Somerset to marry his cousin Bella Bruce. Rhoda, furious at being discarded, joins forces with Sir Charles’s scheming cousin Richard Doolittle Doolittle Bassett in a campaign to ruin him. Their schemes include forging a will, attempting to have Sir Charles committed to a lunatic asylum (a threat that allowed Reade to revisit the asylum material he had used so effectively in Hard Cash), and manipulating the legal system to strip him of his estate.
The “terrible temptation” of the title operates on multiple levels: Rhoda is tempted to seek revenge; Richard is tempted to steal the inheritance; Sir Charles is tempted to return to Rhoda; and the reader is tempted to dismiss the whole thing as absurd — except that Reade’s footnotes insist, as always, that every outrage in the novel is based on documented cases. The lunacy-law abuses, the ease of committing a sane person, the corruption of medical testimony — these were real problems, and Reade’s fiction, however melodramatic, helped keep them in public view.
Collecting A Terrible Temptation
First edition (Chapman & Hall, London, 1871): Three volumes, cloth.
Market values:
- First edition, three volumes: $80–$200
- Single-volume editions: $10–$20