The Novels and Selected Plays of Thomas Holcroft

Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809) was a key figure in the radical movement of the 1790s.

Recognised by Coleridge as an energetic 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 as the missing link between the explicitly feminist novels of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays and Charlotte Smith, and the explicitly political, speculative novels of William Godwin and Robert Bage.

A close friend of Godwin, the most dramatic moment in his life was imprisonment for high treason and subsequent appearance in the 1794 Treason Trials.

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".The works presented in this new critical edition have never been republished, and are supported by full editorial apparatus, including a substantial general introduction, introductions to each volume, endnotes and select bibliographies.

The work is essential reading for scholars wanting to understand Britain and its literature in the 1790s.