He proudly proclaimed himself a follower of Thomas Frognall Dibdin, W. T. Moncrieff, James Robinson Planché, Douglas William Jerrold and John Baldwin Buckstone—writers who established the "minor drama".
This term referred to plays that were produced at venues other than Covent Garden, Drury Lane and the Haymarket, the "patent theatres" that had a legal monopoly on the presentation of serious, non-musical productions.
Rede was prolific though not disciplined in his approach to writing, and at various times produced song lyrics,[4] novels, magazine articles, reference works and plays.
[3] His most successful play, The Rake's Progress(1832), which later opened at the New York City Theatre on 23 January 1833, is based on William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (1735), a cautionary series of eight prints depicting Tom Rakewell, a middle-class aspirant to aristocratic status who inherits a fortune from his miserly father, seduces and impregnates his maid, indulges in debauchery, is arrested, marries an unattractive but wealthy older woman, gambles away her fortune, goes to debtors' prison, and ends up in a madhouse.
The Wedded Wanderer, or, The Soldier's Fate (1827) The Royal Rake, and the Adventures of Alfred Chesterton (privately printed, 1842, and serialized in the Sunday Times, 1846): a satire on George IV.