Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy was published by Chapman & Hall in 1866, after serialization in the Argosy, and it is Reade’s most accomplished novel after The Cloister and the Hearth. The story is set in eighteenth-century England and traces the destruction of a marriage by sexual jealousy — a subject Reade treats with a psychological intensity unusual in Victorian fiction.
Griffith Gaunt, a Catholic gentleman of moderate fortune, marries Kate Peyton, a beautiful and devout woman whose religious enthusiasm leads her into an intense spiritual friendship with Father Leonard, a young priest. Griffith, unable to distinguish between spiritual and carnal attachment, becomes convinced that Kate and Leonard are lovers. His jealousy drives him to abandon his wife, take a false name, and commit bigamy with a young woman named Mercy Vint. When he returns and is apparently murdered, Kate is tried for his death.
The novel was controversial for its frank treatment of sexuality — not explicit by modern standards, but startlingly direct for the 1860s. The Round Table magazine published a hostile review accusing Reade of indecency, and the novel was suppressed in parts of America. Reade, characteristically, responded with a lawsuit, which he lost.
The real achievement of Griffith Gaunt is its treatment of jealousy as a psychological phenomenon. Reade shows how jealousy distorts perception, how it turns innocent evidence into proof of guilt, and how it destroys the person who feels it more thoroughly than the person it is directed against.
Collecting Griffith Gaunt
First edition (Chapman & Hall, London, 1866): Three volumes, cloth.
Market values:
- First edition, three volumes: $150–$400
- Single-volume editions: $15–$35