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The Family Picture; or, domestic Dialogues on amiable and interesting Subjects: illustrated by Histories, Allegories, Tales, Fables, Anecdotes, &c. intended to strengthen and inform the Mind … London: Printed for Lockyer Davis … Printer to the Royal Society. 1783.

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First edition of an early work by the radical playwright and novelist Thomas Holcroft. The Egerton family gather in the library every evening to tell stories for their mutual instruction and amusement. The novel takes the form of twenty dialogues, and each includes a number of shorter tales. Several have a European flavour reflecting Holcroft’s wide reading in German literature: ‘Conjugal Affection of the Women of Wensberg’; ‘Emulation: or an Account of a famous German Poetess’ [Louisa Darbach]; ‘Pride: or the extraordinary History of a Venetian Lady’. Others have an oriental cast: ‘Selfishness: or the Merchant of Bagdat’; ‘Fortitude: or the Great Traveller’ [‘I am the son of a master of a ship of Basra, and my name is Aboulfaouaris’]; ‘An Account of Mahomet and Mahometanism … his Paradise … his Hell … Terrible Relation of a Turkish Fast’.

Some of the dialogues are original, some are borrowed, as Holcroft acknowledges in the author’s advertisement. ‘Perseverance: the History of a German Philosopher’, for example, is taken from the Annual Register for 1761.

Uncommon. ESTC locates five copies: BL, Bodley; Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and Minnesota.

Garside, Raven, and Schöwerling, 1783: 13; Elbridge Colby, Bibliography of Thomas Holcroft 41.

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