REALITIES AND REFLECTIONS IN WHICH VIRTUE AND VICE ARE CONTRASTED.: The incidents taken from real life, and designed under an entertaining form, strongly to impress upon the youthful mind a reverence for Christian and social duties…

SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED. 8vo, pp. [vi], 9-157, [1] blank; with engraved frontispiece 'Drawn & Engr. by T. Simms, Birm.m.' uncut in original boards, spine repaired with the remains of the spine label, a good copy.


How much of Holbrook's work is autobiographical and reflects her experience through her 'nine years of misery' on the stage is difficult to gauge.

In a series of ten 'Tales' Holbrook covers such topics as Filial Duty, Disobedience to Parents, Humanity, Selfishness, Piety, Conjugal Affection, 'Fatal Effects of Erroneous Education', Indolence, Perseverance, and Despondence. These tend towards the style of miniature Gothic novellas that are chiefly designed to tug at the heartstrings of the good Christian readers. At the conclusion of each tale Holbrook adds a few paragraphs of 'Reflections' explaining the significance of the actions of the actors in each of her tales. That they all seem to die grief stricken from mental suffering, transported for life, or restored to their families full of remorse, shows that there is more than a touch of melodrama experienced by Holbrook's own life on the stage that has been incorporated in the text.

The first edition was issued at Uttoxeter in 1821 under the title Tales, serious and instructive in which virtue and vice are contrasted: with moral reflections subjoined to each with our enlarged second edition published some forty miles away at Burton-upon-Trent. Judging by an initial leaf of patrons and patronesses together with a further nine pages of subscribers at the end, the work was keenly anticipated.

Ann Catherine Holbrook, [née Jackson] (1780–1837), actress and author, was probably born in London. Her father, Thomas Jackson, was an actor, and she was brought up to that profession. Before she was eighteen she played with success such characters as Juliet, Roxana, and Alicia. Her mother died in 1794 and her father at Norwich in 1798. On his deathbed he commended her to his own manager, John Brunton, of the Colchester theatre, who failed to fulfil this last request. She then went to London to seek work on the stage through a theatrical 'register-office' in Russell Court, which referred her to a provincial company at Lewes in Sussex. Three months later, in Battle, Sussex, she married a man named Holbrook who was an actor with the same company. They acted together with various provincial companies in such towns as Taunton, Preston, and Lancaster, where 'the noble ladies' made her a liberal present. They then tried engagements in Cheltenham, where the countess of Kenmare attended their benefit, in Windsor, and in Daventry, where there was a fire in the theatre. An engagement with W. C. Macready in the midlands followed during which they hoped to earn more for the support of their children, but they soon left the stage, disillusioned with the 'nine years of misery' produced by the general conditions they had encountered in the theatre and with management in particular. Ann Holbrook then turned to writing, and produced in 1809 The Dramatist, or, Memoirs of the Stage, with the Life of the Authoress. A large part of this small book, subscribed to by nine members of the aristocracy among numerous others, is devoted to the financial difficulties of life as an actor and the insensitive treatment by management, which she hoped might prove a deterrent to others wishing to enter the profession. She did not hesitate to recount anecdotes against herself, such as a description of a time when she lost her wig on the stage, to the embarrassment of cast and audience. She continued to write, producing Tales, Serious and Instructive in 1821, Constantine Castriot, an Historical Tale in 1829, and Realities and Reflections: a Series of Original Tales in 1834. She died in London in January 1837.

OCLC records one copy in the UK, at the BL (missing the 'Patrons' leaf), and one other, in the US, at Stanford; with three copies recorded of the first edition of the previous year (The BL, Florida and The Morgan).