[2] Following a short period of study at Edinburgh University he moved in 1841 to London, where he gained a job as a court reporter for the Morning Chronicle newspaper.
[1] Reach's early duties included coverage of events at the Old Bailey and later the House of Commons, before he gained greater recognition contributing to an investigative journalism series on the conditions of the urban poor in the manufacturing districts of England.
[2] Reach's novel, originally serialised as Clement Lorimer, or, The Book with the Iron Clasps, ran in monthly instalments through 1848–9, before being collected in a single volume and later republished in two parts as Leonard Lindsay, or, The Story of a Buccaneer.
Purportedly, while dining with a friend – the ophthalmologist Jabez Hogg – Reach asked a waiter to bring him ink to complete a letter to the Chronicle.
"[8] In 1854 Reach suffered an attack described variously in contemporary accounts as a "paralytic" illness[9] and a "softening of the brain",[10] and identified by modern biographers as a probable cerebral haemorrhage.
[9] The performance included many of the works Reach himself had written or translated: all the seats in the house sold out, and such figures as Charles Dickens numbered among the audience.