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The present article focuses on the literary activity of a Victorian writer Charles Reade; in particular, it deals with the peculiarities of reception of his matterof-fact-romances in Russia in the 1850-1860s. The main objective of the research is to study genre characteristics, poetics and aesthetics of a matter-of-fact-romance and its Russian translation reception in the indicated decades. During the 1850-1860s, three novels of the given genre were translated into Russian, one of them twice. In the paper, one of the three novels is studied by means of historico-literary and typological methods; a comparative analysis of the original with the Russian translation is conducted as well. The matter-of-fact romance “Hard Cash” (1863) was translated into Russian a year later after its publication in England. The translated version was published in the established literary journal “Otechestvennye zapiski” [Native Notes] (in volumes 152, 153 and 154) in St. Petersburg. A comparative analysis of the Russian translation of “Hard Cash” with the original reveals that the Russian version represents a professional literary translation having retained a distinctive Reade's writing style. Meanwhile, it is notable, that the anonymous author1 of the Russian translation interprets some psychological and moral issues along with relationships of the main heroes in his own way, sometimes exaggerating the tragedy of the narrative; in general, such translation “liberties” do not distort the main meaning of the original.