A key figure in British literary circles following the French Revolution, novelist and playwright Thomas Holcroft promoted ideas of reform and equality. This volume authoritatively reintroduces and reestablishes this central figure of the revolutionary decade by examining his life, plays, memoirs, and personal correspondence.
Thomas Holcroft’s Revolutionary Drama reintroduces Holcroft as a central figure in the 1790s and beyond. His life is examined alongside his plays, memoir, diary, and personal correspondence, along with the critical and popular response to his radical drama, showing how theater functions in times of political repression. Holcroft’s robust afterlife is also discussed, especially his play The Road to Ruin, revived worldwide throughout the nineteenth century.