Hard Cash: A Matter of Fact Romance
Hard Cash: A Matter of Fact Romance,a sensation novel by C. Reade , published 1863 (published in serial form as Very Hard Cash). Reade's novel attacks mid-Victorian Britain's poorly regulated asylum system through two main plot strands. The first concerns Alfred Hardie, wrongfully incarcerated in an insane asylum by his father Richard, in order to conceal a banking fraud. Alfred is terrorized by the mental pathologist Dr Wycherly (an unflattering portrait of the eminent Dr John Conolly), and escapes only when a fellow inmate sets the institution on fire. A second plot involves a genuine case of insanity, David Dodd, a sea-captain ruined by Richard Hardie's scheme. Dodd is also the hero of Reade's Love Me Little, Love Me Long ( 1859 ). The novel concludes with a request for information relating to the wrongful committal of other sane persons—in response to which Rosina Bulwer-Lytton wrote her memoir, A Blighted Life (...
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