UPDATE: Now implemented in v1.8.11
From NEWS :
fread now accepts quotes (both ' and ") in the middle of fields,
whether the field starts with " or not, rather than the 'unbalanced
quotes' error, #2694. Thanks to baidao for reporting. It was known and
documented at the top of ?fread (text now removed). If a field starts
with " it must end with " (necessary if the field separator itself is in the
field contents). Embedded quotes can be in column names too. Newlines (\n)
still can't be in quoted fields or quoted column names, yet.
Yes as @agstudy said, embedded quotes are a known documented problem not yet implemented since fread
is new. Strictly speaking, I suppose these ones aren't embedded because the string in your example doesn't start with a quote, though.
Anyway, I've filed this as a bug report so it doesn't get forgotten. To be done in the next release. Thanks for highlighting.
#2694 : Strings including quotes but not starting with quote in fread