The Politics of Improvement in Thomas Holcroft's Anna St Ives

The article considers Thomas Holcroft's Jacobin novel, Anna St Ives (1792), and, rather than focusing primarily on the oft-explored narrative introducing Frank Henley and Anna St Ives as exponents of an enlightened philosophy of 'mind', concentrates on an alternative narrative of improvement. I shall focus on a discussion of the minor characters, Sir Arthur St Ives and Abimelech Henley, the baronet's steward, and contextualise their landscaping activities as part of an improvement narrative that is informed by Enlightenment values of such landscape gardeners as William Shenstone and Thomas Whately. I shall also briefly relate the characters to an earlier comic tradition utilising the figure of the Quixote.