Griffith Gaunt

Griffith Gaunt, or Jealousy

Title page to Vol. 1 of first U.K. edition (1866)
Author	Charles Reade
Illustrator	William Small (Argosy serialization)
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Chapman & Hall (London); Ticknor and Fields (Boston)
Publication date	October 17, 1866 (U.K.)
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	English 1866 ed. 3 volumes: 302, 318, 328; U.S., 1 vol. 218 p.

Griffith Gaunt, or Jealousy is an 1866 sensation novel by Charles Reade. It was a best-selling book in its day and thought by Reade to be his best novel, although critics generally have preferred The Cloister and the Hearth (1861).

Reade's Hearth, set in the 15th century, was not especially successful when released in 1861. Reade decided the public "don't care about the dead," and so endeavoured to focus on more contemporary topics of scandal, while still trying to convey a social purpose in his work. First serialized in the new British Argosy magazine (with illustrations by William Small), and in the American Altantic (December 1865 – November 1866),Gaunt delivered "a highly colored story of bigamy, murder, and mistaken identity among eighteenth-century gentry" with "almost pathological sensationalism." Attacks on the book's morality were primarily from the American press, not the English.

The New York Round Table said the novel was "indecent" and that even the "lowest sensational weekly papers" would not publish it. Excerpts of the negative review were republished in other papers including the London Review. Reade penned letters of rebuke to newspaper editors, including one titled "The Prurient Prude" which was republished widely. As the New York Herald commented, the attacks on the morality of the book and Reade's responses gave the book great popularity, and they "fear to injure the popularity of Griffith Gaunt by stating that it is not a whit immoral nor dangerous."

Reade sued for defamation, and had actor and well-known elocutionist George Vandenhoff read much of the novel to the jury. Reade was awarded six cents and additional popularity and publicity for his book. Reade's friend and fellow novelist Wilkie Collins sought to have Charles Dickens testify in Reade's behalf at the trial, but Dickens declined, finding the book "the work of a highly accomplished writer and a good man", yet containing passages he would not have published himself.

In a much-followed American scandal and 1875 trial (a trial that went on for six months), Henry Ward Beecher was sued by Theodore Tilton for committing adultery with his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth claimed in part that her actions were influenced by reading Gaunt, and the novel was dissected in depth during the trial.