Overview

Academic - Literature - Theatrical Studies - History - C 18Th Studies Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809) was a key figure in the radical movement of the 1790s. Recognised by Coleridge as an energetic if somewhat erratic proponent of atheism, and pronounced by Godwin as one of his 'four principal oral instructors', Holcroft was an original if somewhat undisciplined thinker, a talented novelist, a popular playwright and translator, and an accomplished political pamphleteer. His novels can be seen to constitute the missing link between the explicitly feminist novels of, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, and Charlotte Smith, and the explicitly political, speculative novels of William Godwin and Robert Bage. The most dramatic moment in his life, his imprisonment for high treason and subsequent appearance in the 1794 Treason Trials, was recorded for posterity in Sir Thomas Lawrence's drawing of him and his friend Godwin. By that time, however, Holcroft was already the celebrated author of one of the best plays from the Revolutionary Age, The Road to Ruin (1791). And yet, whilst his place in the novelistic and dramatic traditions of the Romantic era is uncontested, none of his writings are currently in print - not even his highly acclaimed novels Anna St Ives and The Adventures of Hugh Trevor. This edition will restore the full range of Thomas Holcroft's versatile talent to British literary history.

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9781851968015

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'[a] thoughtful and well-annotated set ... This collection will surely become the standard edition of these novels and plays for scholarly reference' Keats-Shelley Journal

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