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