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.

AMY GARNAI teaches at the Kibbutzim College of Education in Tel Aviv, Israel. She is the author of Revolutionary Imaginings in the 1790s: Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Elizabeth Inchbald, and her essays have been published in Women's Writing, SEL, Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Wordsworth Circle, and The Review of English Studies.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter One: Thomas Holcroft and the Treason Trials
Chapter Two: The Road to Ruin and its Afterlives
Chapter Three: Radicalism, Authorship and Sincerity in Holcroft's Later Plays
Chapter Four: Holcroft's Diary and Other Life Writing
Chapter Five: Holcroft's Melodrama
Chapter Six: Final Years and Other Afterlives
Bibliography