Thomas Holcroft

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Standard Name: Holcroft, Thomas

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Ann Yearsley
Reviewing the first two volumes, the Critical Review was more than a little patronising, evidently on grounds of class. It observed from details of costume and so forth that AY had actually studied the period...
Friends, Associates Mary Wollstonecraft
On her return to London MW sought out the publisher Joseph Johnson , of 72, St Paul's Churchyard, who became her patron, helper, and friend. He introduced her to Sarah Trimmer , Anna Letitia Barbauld
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Wollstonecraft
Four months after her return to England MW received an impassioned written proposal of marriage, which may perhaps have come from the currently widowed Thomas Holcroft .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Holcroft
Friends, Associates Mary Shelley
Visitors to the family included William Wordsworth , William Hazlitt , Charles Lamb , Thomas Holcroft , Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Maria Edgeworth .
Hill-Miller, Katherine C. ’My Hideous Progeny’: Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and the Father-Daughter Relationship. University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses.
27-8
Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. Little, Brown.
40-1
Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. Routledge.
11
Literary responses Ann Radcliffe
The Italian won for AR the accolade of praise from Thomas James Matthias , scholar, editor, and librarian at Buckingham Palace, who invoked the shade of Ariosto to honour her in the same place...
Literary responses Anna Maria Porter
The Critical Review welcomed the first volume, but said this young genius was worthy of, or needed, further cultivation. When volume two rapidly followed, the journal felt that it was premature. It complained that the...
Friends, Associates Anne Plumptre
Their friends included Eliza Fenwick , Helen Maria Williams , Susannah Taylor , Mary Hays , Amelia Opie , Thomas Holcroft , John Thelwall , and other radicals. AP supported Thelwall's local electioneering, and Ann Jebb
politics Amelia Opie
Amelia Alderson (later AO ) attended the treason trials at the Old Bailey of Horne Tooke and Thomas Holcroft (friends of her family) and other would-be reformers; it was here that she got to know...
Friends, Associates Amelia Opie
In London she met many artists, writers, and politically active reformists: as well as Godwin , she met Elizabeth Inchbald , Mary Wollstonecraft (who impressed her deeply, and trusted her enough to confide her plans...
Family and Intimate relationships Amelia Opie
Both Holcroft (who, four times married and widowed, was now fresh from being arrested for treason and discharged) and Godwin (while not yet a lover of Wollstonecraft) took a romantic or flirtatious as well as...
Textual Production Elizabeth Meeke
In an AdvertisementEM says she has changed her original fairly extensively in order to make it more probable. Her reason for undertaking the project was to show the reading public what was the basis...
Intertextuality and Influence Eliza Kirkham Mathews
The novel which emerged from so much interference during composition is naive, exaggerated, and badly structured, but highly unusual, with great intensity in its writing. Its title-page quotes Thomas Holcroft , and its epigraphs to...
Leisure and Society Anna Margaretta Larpent
In a typical day, AML read Tom Paine to herself, and Sarah Trimmer and some Latin with her sons. She went to see the kangaroo, the Polygraphic Exhibition, and Thomas Holcroft 's Road to Ruin.
Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Farrar Straus Giroux.
56
Textual Production Maria Theresa Kemble
MTK and her future husband were not, as is sometimes said, joint authors of Deaf and Dumb, a musical drama of the 1800-1 season: it was a French piece adapted by Thomas Holcroft ...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Inchbald
EI met Thomas Holcroft , the dramatist and radical social reformer, who was associated with what was later termed the Jacobin movement.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. A Simple Story, edited by Jane Spencer and Joyce Marjorie Sanxter Tompkins, Oxford University Press, p. vii - xxxiii.
xxxi
Manvell, Roger. Elizabeth Inchbald: England’s Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in 18th Century London. University Press of America.
41-2

Timeline

7 February 1792: Thomas Holcroft, radical or Jacobin novelist...

Writing climate item

7 February 1792

Thomas Holcroft , radical or Jacobin novelist and dramatist of working-class origins (father of another future writer, Fanny Holcroft ) published his novel Anna St Ives.

18 February 1792: Thomas Holcroft's play The Road to Ruin,...

Writing climate item

18 February 1792

Thomas Holcroft 's playThe Road to Ruin, which Elizabeth Inchbald ranked among the most successful of modern plays,
Hazlitt, William et al. “Introduction”. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, edited by Elbridge Colby, Constable, p. 1: xv - lv.
xxvii-xxviii
had its premiere.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
5: 1428

14 June 1792: Robert Bage anonymously published his radical...

Writing climate item

14 June 1792

Robert Bage anonymously published his radicalnovelMan As He Is, in which a young baronet learns to rise above the vices of his class.

March 1793: Thomas Holcroft, in his Monthly review of...

Writing climate item

March 1793

Thomas Holcroft , in his Monthly review of Robert Bage 's recent Man As He Is, made disparaging remarks about young ladies who write novels, as well as those who read them; he may...

November 1802: Thomas Holcroft's "A Tale of Mystery", produced...

Building item

November 1802

Thomas Holcroft 's "A Tale of Mystery", produced at Covent Garden , formally introduced melodrama to the English stage.

By May 1816: William Hazlitt edited, completed, expanded,...

Writing climate item

By May 1816

William Hazlitt edited, completed, expanded, and published The Life of Thomas Holcroft, which had been left unfinished when the radical Thomas Holcroft died.

Texts

Hazlitt, William et al. “Introduction”. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, edited by Elbridge Colby, Constable, 1925, p. 1: xv - lv.
Holcroft, Thomas, and William Hazlitt. Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft. Oxford University Press, 1926.
Holcroft, Thomas, and William Hazlitt. The Life of Thomas Holcroft. Editor Colby, Elbridge, Constable, 1925.
Holcroft, Thomas. The Theatrical Recorder. Burt Franklin, 1968.