Editing Thomas Holcroft (section)

==Literary and political career==
Two years later Holcroft went to Paris as correspondent of the ''[[Morning Herald]]''. Here he attended the performances of [[Pierre Beaumarchais|Beaumarchais]]'s ''Mariage de Figaro'' until he had memorized the whole. His translation of it, with the title ''The Follies of the Day'', was produced at [[Drury Lane]] in 1784. His comedy ''[[The Road to Ruin (play)|The Road to Ruin]]'',<ref>[https://archive.org/details/roadtoruincomedy00holc archive.org]</ref> his most successful play, was produced in 1792; a revival in 1873 ran for 118 nights.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

His novels include ''Alwyn'' (1780), an account, largely autobiographical, of a strolling comedian, ''Anna St. Ives'' (the first British [[Jacobin novel]], published in 1792), and ''The Adventures of Hugh Trevor'' (1794–1797). He also wrote ''Travels from Hamburg through Westphalia, Holland and the Netherlands to Paris'', some volumes of verse, and translations from French and German.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} One of these was ''Letters Between Frederic II and M. De Voltaire'' (1789).

Sympathetic to the early ideals of the [[French Revolution]], Holcroft assisted in publishing the first part of [[Thomas Paine]]'s ''The [[Rights of Man]]'' in 1791. He joined the [[Society for Constitutional Information]] (SCI) in 1792 and was appointed a member of a liaison committee to work with the LCS in early 1794. As a result of his activism, Holcroft was indicted in the autumn of 1794 for high treason and held in Newgate Prison whilst [[1794 Treason Trials|three other treason trials]] proceeded. In early December 1794 Holcroft was discharged without trial after those cases, against [[London Corresponding Society]] secretary Thomas Hardy, and SCI figure [[John Horne Tooke]], resulted in acquittals.<ref>For more on Holcroft's activities in the SCI, and the connections between his theatrical and political dissent, see: {{cite journal |doi=10.1086/386246 |first=David S. |last=Karr |title="Thoughts That Flash like Lightning": Thomas Holcroft, Radical Theater, and the Production of Meaning in 1790s London |journal=Journal of British Studies |volume=40 |date=July 2001 |pages=324–56 |issue=3 |jstor=3070727|s2cid=144541409 }}</ref>

As one of what Secretary of War [[William Windham]] called "acquitted felons", Holcroft's post-arrest reputation meant that his plays achieved little success after 1795, although he was instrumental in bringing [[melodrama]] to Britain at the end of the decade with his ''Deaf and Dumb'' (1801) and ''A Tale of Mystery'' (1802, an unacknowledged translation of [[René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt|de Pixerécourt]]'s ''Cœlina, ou, l'enfant du mystère''). Despite a modicum of success with ''A Tale of Mystery'', the remainder of the decade was marked by unsuccessful attempts to return to the public eye. He died in 1809, not long after a deathbed reconciliation with his closest friend from the 1790s (lately estranged), [[William Godwin]].{{Citation needed|date=January 2021}} His ''Memoirs written by Himself and continued down to the Time of his Death, from his Diary, Notes and other Papers'', by [[William Hazlitt]], appeared in 1816, and was reprinted, in a slightly abridged form, in 1852.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}