Peg Woffington was published by Richard Bentley in 1853, Reade’s first novel and the beginning of a literary career that would make him one of the most popular and controversial novelists of the Victorian period. The novel originated as a play — Masks and Faces, co-written with Tom Taylor and successfully staged in 1852 — and Reade expanded it into prose fiction, adding depth and detail to what had been a swift theatrical entertainment.
The historical Peg Woffington (c. 1720–1760) was one of the greatest actresses of the Georgian theater, famous for her beauty, her wit, and her “breeches roles” — parts in which she played men, displaying her legs to audiences accustomed to seeing women completely covered. Reade’s novel follows her love affair with David Garrick, the greatest actor of the age, and the complications introduced by Garrick’s simultaneous attachment to the sweet, domestic Mabel Vane — a woman who represents everything Peg is not: quiet, virtuous, and dull.
The novel’s strength is its theatrical atmosphere. Reade, who had spent years in the theater before turning to fiction, writes about actors, rehearsals, performances, and backstage life with the authority of an insider. The world of the mid-eighteenth-century London stage — glamorous, precarious, intensely social, and permeated by sexual intrigue — is rendered with a vividness that no other Victorian novelist could match.
Collecting Peg Woffington
First edition (Richard Bentley, London, 1853): Cloth. Reade’s first novel.
Market values:
- First edition: $100–$300
- Later Victorian editions: $15–$40