New Book by New College Professor Miriam Wallace Focuses on 18th-century Novelist and Radical Thomas Holcroft

November 26, 2012 — New College of Florida Professor Miriam Wallace has co-edited a collection of essays titled Re-Viewing Thomas Holcroft, 1745-1809: Essays on Thomas Holcroft’s Works and Life, published by Ashgate. The book focuses on Thomas Holcroft, the self-educated son of a cobbler who became a popular 18th-century playwright, influential reformist novelist and controversial political radical.
Re-Viewing Thomas Holcroft is the first essay collection devoted to the life and literary work of Holcroft. Wallace and her co-editor, A.A. Markley, have compiled essays that illustrate Holcroft’s central role among London’s radical reformers and intelligentsia as well as his theatrical innovations within ongoing explorations of the late 18th-century public sphere of letters and debate. Holcraft introduced “melodrama” to Britain and was known as the playwright who brought Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro to the English stage as The Follies of a Day. He was also a victim of the 1794 London Treason Trials.
Dr. Wallace is Professor of English at New College of Florida, where she teaches courses on the British novel and literary theory with a particular interest in feminist and gender theories. As a 2012 Lewis Walpole Library Fellow she conducted research in Yale University’s Walpole library collection for research on her project, “Illustrating Speech: Depicting Professional, Popular, and Illicit Speaking.” In 2002 she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities College Teacher Fellowship for her book Revolutionary Subjects in the English “Jacobin” Novel, 1790-1805.