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A key figure in British literary circles following the French Revolution, novelist and playwright Thomas Holcroft promoted ideas of reform and equality informed by the philosophy of his close friend William Godwin. Arrested for treason in 1794 and released without trial, Holcroft was notorious in his own time, but today appears mainly as a supporting character in studies of 1790s literary activism. Thomas Holcroft’s Revolutionary Drama authoritatively reintroduces and reestablishes this central figure of the revolutionary decade by examining his life, plays, memoirs, and personal correspondence. In engaging with theatrical censorship, apostacy, and the response of audiences and critics to radical drama, this thoughtful study also demonstrates how theater functions in times of political repression. Despite his struggles, Holcroft also had major successes: this book examines his surprisingly robust afterlife, as his plays, especially The Road to Ruin, were repeatedly revived worldwide in the nineteenth century.
Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809) was a key figure in the radical movement of the 1790s. This work is intended for scholars wanting to understand Britain and its literature in the 1790s.
Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809) was a key figure in the radical movement of the 1790s. This work is intended for scholars wanting to understand Britain and its literature in the 1790s.
Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809) was a key figure in the radical movement of the 1790s. This work is intended for scholars wanting to understand Britain and its literature in the 1790s.
Between the advent of the French Revolution and the short-lived success of the Chartist Movement, overworked and underpaid labourers struggled to achieve solidarity and collective bargaining. That history has been told in numerous accounts of the age, but never before has it been told in terms of the theatre of the period. To understand the play lists of a theatre, it is crucial to examine the community which that theatre serves. In the labouring-class communities of London and the provinces, the performances were adapted to suit the local audiences, whether weavers, or miners, or field workers. Examining the conditions and characteristics of representative provincial theatres from the 1790s to 1830s, Frederick Burwick argues that the meaning of a play changes with every change in the performance location. As contributing factors in that change, Burwick attends to local political and cultural circumstances as well as to theatrical activities and developments elsewhere.
Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809) was a key figure in the radical movement of the 1790s. This work is intended for scholars wanting to understand Britain and its literature in the 1790s.
The "Jacobin" novel was labeled as such in Britain because of its supposed connections to the French Revolution. This book takes an in-depth look at these novels, written between 1790 and 1805. She centers on the group surrounding Wollstonecraft and Godwin, although not exclusively, exploring the limits of their philosophy of human rights and personal subjectivity. Unlike other recent scholars, the author treats both male and female writers, making feminism an aspect of the work but not the overriding one. While the novels are the main focus, other work by the writers is considered as it pertains to their beliefs. She also discusses the reaction from those who defined the "Jacobins" by opposing them.
French playwright, novelist, activist, and journalist Louis Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814) passionately captured scenes of social injustice in pre-Revolutionary Paris in his prolific oeuvre but today remains an understudied writer. In this penetrating study—the first in English devoted to Mercier in decades—Michael Mulryan explores his unpublished writings and urban chronicles, Tableau de Paris (1781–88) and Le Nouveau Paris (1798), in which he identified the city as a microcosm of national societal problems, detailed the conditions of the laboring poor, encouraged educational reform, and confronted universal social ills. Mercier’s rich writings speak powerfully to the sociopolitical problems that continue to afflict us as political leaders manipulate public debate and encourage absolutist thinking, deepening social divides. An outcast for his polemical views during his lifetime, Mercier has been called the founder of modern urban discourse, and his work a precursor to investigative journalism. This sensitive study returns him to his rightful place among Enlightenment thinkers.
The first chapter discusses Holcroft's early life. The next three chapters examine his theories and practice as critic, dramatist and novelist, placing his writing within the context of the age and noting his literary debts. The fifth chapter concentrates on Holcroft's political views, which led to Holcroft's indictment for high treason in 1794. The final chapter provides a summary. Includes annotated bibliography and an index.
Thomas Holcroft was a central figure of the 1790s, whose texts played an important role in the transition toward Romanticism. In this, the first essay collection devoted to his life and work, the contributors reassess Holcroft's contributions to a remarkable range of literary genres-drama, poetry, fiction, autobiography, political philosophy-and to the project of revolutionary reform in the late eighteenth century. The self-educated son of a cobbler, Holcroft transformed himself into a popular playwright, influential reformist novelist, and controversial political radical. But his work is not important merely because he himself was a remarkable character, but rather because he was a hinge figure between laboring Britons and the dissenting intelligentsia, between Enlightenment traditions and developing 'Romantic' concerns, and between the world of self-made hack writers and that of established critics. Enhanced by an updated and corrected chronology of Holcroft's life and work, key images, and a full bibliography of published scholarship, this volume makes way for more concerted and focused scholarship and teaching on Holcroft. Taken together, the essays in this collection situate Holcroft's self-fashioning as a member of London's literati, his central role among the London radical reformers and intelligentsia, and his theatrical innovations within ongoing explorations of the late eighteenth-century public sphere of letters and debate.