ABSTRACT
The key battleground in the 1790s between the reformers and conservatives, and hence between Jacobin and anti-Jacobin authors, was the issue of mobility: the mobility of people and ideas across geographical spaces, but particularly across class and gender boundaries and across national and racial boundaries. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the French translator of Hugh Trevor subtitled the novel, le Gil Blas anglais. As the ultimate union of Frank and Anna illustrates, for Holcroft the aim and function of the republican marriage is the abolition of any distinctions between people based on sex or rank. Thus, instead of preaching the doctrine of universal benevolence and the greater good as he had done in Anna St. Ives, in Hugh Trevor Holcroft explicitly attacks the social and political institutions of established order.
