Essays

This selection presents Hazlitt's familiar essays on literature, painting, the stage, politics, and character, drawn from the books he issued in the 1810s and 1820s. Typical pieces examine a play or a painter, a political type, a personal dislike, or a habit of mind such as the pleasure of hating or going a journey. He writes in the first person, arguing as he describes, and sets contemporary writers and public men beside Shakespeare and the older English poets. The collection is not a single argument but a series of independent inquiries into taste, power, and temperament in Regency England.

18 wood-engraved vignettes by Frank Martin. Full dark red buckram binding with a design in gold. Endleaves with a repeat pattern in green by Martin. Red or grey-green slipcase.