Hugh Trevor's education reaches its final stage. Having rejected the law, he enters Parliament through a rotten borough whose thirty voters are all purchasable. There he witnesses the commerce of Georgian politics at its crudest, with a peerage quietly awarded to the winner. Yet amid the corruption, one man's repentance offers hope: Wakefield, once the novel's most determined antagonist, discovers that even the most corrupted life can turn.

The satire strikes harder still; friendships break, death claims the innocent, and Hugh faces prison for debt once more. In his uncle's sudden appearance may lie the solution, but also a moral test: should wealth serve society or simply its possessor?

Holcroft's masterpiece was completed in the shadow of Pitt's repression. Written after the 1794 treason trials when radical speech itself became dangerous, this concluding volume stands as the English Jacobin novel's boldest testament to virtue under fire.

This third volume of The Adventures of Hugh Trevor presents volumes V and VI of the original six-volume work published in 1797. The Preface, Biographical Introduction, Editorial Note and Introduction to the series appear in Volume I.

Edited with notes and an introduction by L.A. Davenport.