Read complete books and articles on: William Hazlitt

Hazlitt, William - 1778–1830, English essayist. Abandoning the idea of entering the clergy, he took up painting and later journalism. He acted as parliamentary reporter and theatrical critic for the Morning Chronicle and later contributed to Leigh Hunt's Examiner, the Edinburgh Review, the London Magazine, and the New Monthly. Hazlitt's penetrating literary criticism is collected in Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817), Lectures on the English Poets (1818), Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819), Table Talk (1821–22), and The Spirit of the Age (1825), portraits of his contemporaries. His essays on Shakespeare and his Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1820) renewed enthusiasm for Elizabethan drama.

Hazlitt was one of the great masters of the miscellaneous essay, displaying a keen intellect, sensibility, and wide scope of interest and knowledge. His most notable single essays include "On Going a Journey," "My First Acquaintance with Poets," "On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth," and "Going to a Fight." His interest in the French Revolution and his strong beliefs in the principles of liberty and the rights of man inspired him to write a life of Napoleon (4 vol., 1828–30). See his letters (ed. by Herschel M. Sikes et al., 1978).

William Carew Hazlitt, 1834–1913, his grandson, was a bibliographer and wrote The Memoirs of William Hazlitt (1867). Among W. C. Hazlitt's works are a valuable Handbook to the Popular, Poetical, and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain (1867) and its supplements and Four Generations of a Literary Family: The Hazlitts (1897).

See biographies of the elder Hazlitt by H. C. Baker (1962), P. P. Howe (1947, repr. 1972), and S. Jones (1989); studies by J. B. Priestley (1960), R. Park (1971), R. M. Wardle (1971), J. Kinnaird (1978), and D. Bromwich (1985).

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14 of the Best Books and Articles on: William Hazlitt

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1.

Hazlitt » Read Now
by Ralph M. Wardle. 530 pgs.

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2.

Selected Writings » Read Now
by William Hazlitt, Jon Cook. 423 pgs.

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William Hazlitt (1778-1830) developed a variety of identities as a writer: essayist, philosopher, critic of literature, drama and art, biographer, political commentator, and polemicist. Praised for his eloquence, he was also reviled by conservatives for his radical politics. This edition...
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William Hazlitt (1778-1830) developed a variety of identities as a writer: essayist, philosopher, critic of literature, drama and art, biographer, political commentator, and polemicist. Praised for his eloquence, he was also reviled by conservatives for his radical politics. This edition, thematically organized for ease of access, contains some of his best-known essays, such as "The Indian Jugglers" and "The Fight," as well as more obscure pieces on politics, philosophy, and culture.
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3.

Hazlitt and the Reach of Sense: Criticism, Morals, and the Metaphysics of Power » Read Now
by Uttara Natarajan. 212 pgs.

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The `only pretension, of which I am tenacious,' declares William Hazlitt in The Plain Speaker, `is that of being a metaphysician' yet up till now his metaphysics, and particularly what is here identified as his `power principle', have not been examined in detail. This book identifies the...
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The `only pretension, of which I am tenacious,' declares William Hazlitt in The Plain Speaker, `is that of being a metaphysician' yet up till now his metaphysics, and particularly what is here identified as his `power principle', have not been examined in detail. This book identifies the metaphysical Hazlitt within the other and better-known Hazlitt, long acknowledged as a master of `the familiar style' and more recently celebrated for the fierceness and intensity of his political prose. Studying his development of the power principle as a counter to the pleasure principle of the Utilitarians, it examines the revelation of power in his philosophy of discourse, his account of imaginative structure, his theory of genius, and his moral theory, and asserts the tenacity of this principle throughout his work. Disseminated through the range of his writings, Hazlitt's metaphysics becomes a metaphysics of power in more senses than one: it is both argument and example, itself manifesting that force of human intellect that it seeks to explicate.
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4.

The Logic of Passion: The Literary Criticism of William Hazlitt » Read Now
by John L. Mahoney. 126 pgs.

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...THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF WILLIAM HAZLITT JOHN L. MAHONEY New York...from The Complete Works of William Hazlitt , ed. P. P. Howe, 21 vols...Introduction THE LIFE AND WORK...
5.

Hazlitt and the Real Language of Poetry, in Philological Quarterly » Read Now
by Uttara Natarajan. 16 pgs.

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...taken from The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe, 21 vols. (London...of power." See John Kinnaird, William Hazlitt: Critic of Power (Columbia...
6.

William Hazlitt on Dramatic Text and Performance, in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 » Read Now
by James Mulvihill. 15 pgs.

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...William Hazlitt on dramatic text and performance...text and performance is central to William Hazlitts dramatic criticism. For the typical...of Romantic England. NOTES (1.)...
7.

William Hazlitt, on Being Brilliant, in Studies in Romanticism » Read Now
by Claire Brock. 21 pgs.

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8.

Imagination under Pressure, 1789-1832: Aesthetics, Politics, and Utility (Chap. 4 "Hazlitt and the Limits of the Sympathetic Imagination") » Read Now
by John Whale. 243 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Literature, Entire Library

This ambitious study offers a radical reassessment of one of the most important concepts of the Romantic period--the imagination. In contrast to traditional accounts, John Whale locates the Romantic imagination within the period's lively and often antagonistic polemics on aesthetics and politics...
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This ambitious study offers a radical reassessment of one of the most important concepts of the Romantic period--the imagination. In contrast to traditional accounts, John Whale locates the Romantic imagination within the period's lively and often antagonistic polemics on aesthetics and politics, focusing in particular on British responses to the French Revolution and the ideology of utilitarianism. Through detailed analysis of key texts by Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Hazlitt, Cobbett and Coleridge, this book seeks to restore the role of imagination as a more positive force within cultural critique.
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9.

Literary Magazines and British Romanticism (Chap. Two "A Conversation between Friends: Hazlitt and the London Magazine") » Read Now
by Mark Parker. 213 pgs.

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In this study, Mark Parker argues that magazines such as the London Magazine and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine offered an innovative and collaborative space for writers and their work--indeed, magazines became one of the preeminent literary forms of the 1820s and 1830s. Examining the dynamic...
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In this study, Mark Parker argues that magazines such as the London Magazine and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine offered an innovative and collaborative space for writers and their work--indeed, magazines became one of the preeminent literary forms of the 1820s and 1830s. Examining the dynamic relationship between literature and culture that evolved within this context, Literary Magazines and British Romanticism claims that writing in such a setting enters into a variety of alliances with other contributions and with ongoing institutional concerns that give subtle inflection to its meaning.
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10.

Hazlitt, Horne and the Spirit of the Age, in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 » Read Now
by Paul Schlicke. 23 pgs.

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11.

Hazlitt, Ruskin and Ideal Form, in Philological Quarterly » Read Now
by Uttara Natarajan. 10 pgs.

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12.

Rousseau, Robespierre and English Romanticism (Chap. 7 "'Sour Jacobinism': William Hazlitt and the Resistance to Reform") » Read Now
by Gregory Dart. 288 pgs.

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This book reopens the question of Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution and on English Romanticism, by examining the relationship between his confessional writings and his political theory. Gregory Dart argues that by looking at the way in which Rousseau's writings were mediated by the...
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This book reopens the question of Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution and on English Romanticism, by examining the relationship between his confessional writings and his political theory. Gregory Dart argues that by looking at the way in which Rousseau's writings were mediated by the speeches and actions of Robespierre, we can gain a clearer and more concrete sense of the legacy he left to English writers. He shows how the writings of Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth and Hazlitt rehearse and reflect upon the Jacobin tradition in the aftermath of the Terror.
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13.

Literary Theory and Criticism Festschrift Presented to Renae Wellek in Honor of His Eightieth Birthday ("William Hazlitt as a Literary Critic in the Spirit of the Age" begins on p. 1333) » Read Now
by Joseph P. Strelka. 790 pgs.

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...Anthony Thorlby Is Romanticism a kind of Literature or a kind of Criticism? 1313 Jacques Voisine William Hazlitt as a Literary Critic in The Spirit of the Age 1333 Eugene...
14.

Seeing in the Dark: Hazlitt's Immanent Idealism, in Studies in Romanticism » Read Now
by Tim Milnes. 25 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Clarendon, 1971); John Kinnaird, William Hazlitt: Critic of Power (New York...Passion: The Literary Criticism of William Hazlitt (Salzburg: Universitat...