Radical journalist, critic, novelist, translator, and playwright; Holcroft's two most important novels include Anna St. Ives (1792), a novel that reworks plot and character elements of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747-9) to shape a response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), and The Adventures of Hugh Trevor (1794), which offers a more general satire on the established order. The majority of his plays were comedies, though later work includes the dark, unsuccessful drama, The Inquisitor (1798). A few other highlights include Alwyn; or, The Gentleman Comedian (1780), Duplicity (1781), Seduction (1787), The School for Arrogance (1791), The Road to Ruin (1792), his most popular piece, The Deserted Daughter (1795), and He's Much to Blame (1798).