The Cloister and the Hearth

Married to Margaret Brandt, Gerard sets off to Rome from Holland to escape the persecution of a vicious burgomaster as well as to earn money for the support of his family.

Margaret discovers Gerard's hiding place and convinces him to come back to normal life in which he becomes a vicar of a small town.

[editorializing] The Cloister and the Hearth may be read as anti-Catholic, as it presents Catholic discipline regarding the celibate priesthood as an obstacle preventing Margaret's and Gerard's love from continuing to be consummated.

[editorializing] Arthur Conan Doyle named this as his favourite novel, saying that I do not know where I can find a book in which the highest qualities of head and of heart go together as they do in this one.

[1]Doyle compliments the quantity of minute detail giving the feeling of daily life in the 1500s, from a clean Dutch home to a slovenly medieval German Inn to conflicted pre-Renaissance Rome.

On the downside he mentions … the imperfections, the irritating and superficial tricks of manner, are so obtrusive that they catch the eye… His style can be abrupt, jerky, and incoherent to an exasperating extent …[1]Thomas Wolfe also considered the novel his favourite work of fiction.

[citation needed] Arthur Machen, in his short story "The Islington Mystery,[3] contrasted the work with George Eliot's Romola: If the crowd runs after the false, it must neglect the true.

[4] In "The Decay of Lying," Oscar Wilde praised the novel as Reade's "one beautiful book", after which he "wasted the rest of his life in a foolish attempt to be modern.".