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 The Atlantic (December 1865 – November 1866),[4][5] Gaunt delivered "a highly colored story of bigamy, murder, and mistaken identity among eighteenth-century gentry" with "almost pathological sensationalism".

[7] In a much-followed American scandal and a six-month trial in 1875, Henry Ward Beecher was sued by Theodore Tilton for committing adultery with his wife Elizabeth.

[14][15][16] Here is a plot summary taken from a 1917 anthology of literature: Griffith Gaunt, a gentleman without fortune, marries Catharine Peyton, a Cumberland heiress, who is a devout Roman Catholic.

After living happily together for eight years, the couple—each of whom has a violent temper, in the husband combined with insane jealousy—are gradually estranged by Catharine's spiritual adviser, Father Leonard, an eloquent young priest.

Under a false pretext he goes back to the inn to break with Mercy; but finding it more difficult than he had anticipated, he defers final action, and returns to Cumberland.

The book form was released in October 1866 – Daly wrote the play in four days, and it received its first performance on 7 November 1866 at the New York Theatre with John K. Mortimer and Rose Eytinge in the lead roles.