The son of a Unitarian minister, William Hazlitt was born at Maidstone in Kent and educated for the ministry at Hackney College (1793-94). He began as a painter, a profession he abandoned for journalism. Hazlitt lectured at the Russell Institution and Surrey Institution, wrote drama criticism for the Morning Chronicle (1814), and contributed to Leigh Hunt's Examiner and to the London Magazine and New Monthly Magazine. His Shakespeare lectures were much admired and his sketches of contemporary writers in his Spirit of the Age (1825) would prove influential.
TEXT RECORDS:
1815Review of Sismondi's De la Litterature du Midi d'un l'Europe.
1815The Round Table. No. 16. ["On Milton's Versification."]
1816The Round Table No. 42. ["On the Character of Milton's Eve."]
1817Review of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria.
1818Lecture II. On Chaucer and Spenser.
1818Lecture III. On Shakespeare and Milton.
1824Select British Poets: Edmund Spenser.
1825The Spirit of the Age: William Godwin.
1826Of Persons one would wish to have seen.
PUBLICATIONS:
An essay on the principles of human action. 1805.
Free thoughts on public affairs: or advice to a patriot. 1806.
Tucker, An abridgment of the Light of nature pursued [ed. Hazlitt]. 1807.
The eloquence of the British senate. 2 vols, 1807.
A reply to the Essay on population by the Rev. T. R. Malthus. 1807.
A new and improved grammar of the English tongue for the use of schools. 1810.
Memoirs of the late Thomas Holcroft. 3 vols, 1816.
The round table: a collection of essays on literature, men, and manners [with Hunt]. 2 vols, 1817.
Characters of Shakespeare's plays. 1817.
A view of the English stage: or a series of dramatic criticisms. 1818.
Lectures on the English poets. 1818.
A letter to William Gifford, esq. 1819.
Lectures on the English comic writers. 1819.
Political essays, with sketches of public characters. 1819.
Lectures chiefly on the dramatic literature of the age of Elizabeth. 1820.
Table-talk: or original essays. 2 vols, 1821-22.
Liber amoris: or the new Pygmalion. 1823.
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims. 1823.
Sketches of the principal picture galleries in England, with a criticism on Marriage a la mode. 1824.
Select British poets: or new elegant extracts from Chaucer to the present time, with critical remarks. 1824, 1825.
The spirit of the age: or contemporary portraits. 1825.
The plain speaker: opinions on books, men, and things. 2 vols, 1826.
Notes of a journey through France and Italy. 1826.
The life of Napoleon Buonoparte. 4 vols, 1828-30.
Conversations of James Northcote esq. 1830.
Literary remains of the late William Hazlitt, with a notice of his life by his son. 2 vols, 1836.
Sketches and essays, now first collected by his son. 1839.
Criticisms on art, and sketches of the picture galleries of England. 1843-44.
Winterslow: essays and characters written there. 1850.
Memoirs of Hazlitt, with portions of his correspondence. 2 vols, 1867.
The complete works, ed. P. P. Howe. 21 vols, 1930-34.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Unitarian
Dissenter
Hackney College
Dissenting academy
painter
essayist
journalist
The Morning Chronicle
The Champion
Yellow Dwarf
The Examiner
The Liberal
Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Magazine
London Magazine
The Monthly Magazine
New Monthly Magazine
Thomas Barnes
Lord Byron
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Barron Field
William Godwin
Benjamin Robert Haydon
Thomas Hood
John Keats
Thomas Holcroft
Leigh Hunt
Charles Lamb
Bryan Waller Procter
John Hamilton Reynolds
Henry Crabb Robinson
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Horace Smith
John Thelwall
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL; CBEL (3rd Ed.); DLB.
Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors (1816); "William Hazlitt and his School" Analectic Magazine [Philadelphia] NS 12 (September 1818) 201-19; "Notice of a Course of Lectures" Blackwood's Magazine 2 (February 1818) 556-62, (March 1818) 679-84 (April 1818) 71-75; "On the Cockney School of Prose Writers" New Monthly Magazine 10 (October 1818-January 1819) 198-202, 299-304, 487-92; "[Hazlitt, Shelley, and the Quarterly Review]" The Examiner (20 January 1822) 34-35; "On the Writings of Hazlitt" Literary Speculum 2 (September 1822) 235-38; "Hunt and Hazlitt" Blackwood's Magazine 16 (1824) 67-73; "Writings of Mr. Hazlitt" Oriental Herald and Colonial Review 3 (September 1824) 23-27; Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); A New Biographical Dictionary of 3000 Cotemporary Public Characters (1825); "Memoir of Mr. William Hazlitt" Literary Chronicle 8 (26 August 1826) 537-40; obituary in Gentleman's Magazine 100 (October 1830) 371-73; obituary in The Kaleidoscope NS 10 (5 October 1830) 110; obituary in Monthly Magazine NS 10 (October 1830) 485-86; J. B. "Recollections of the late William Hazlitt" New Monthly Magazine NS 29 (1830) 469-82; The Georgian Era: Memoirs of the most Eminent Persons (1832-34); Allan Cunningham, "Literature of the last Fifty Years" The Athenaeum (28 December 1833) 893; Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); George Gilfillan, in Gallery of Literary Portraits (1845); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism (1901-05); P. P. Howe, "Hazlitt and Blackwood's Magazine" Fortnightly Review 112 (1919); P. P. Howe, The Life of William Hazlitt (1922, 1928; 1947); P. L. Carver, "Hazlitt's Contributions to the Edinburgh Review" RES 4 (1928) 375-93; Geoffrey Keynes, Bibliography of Hazlitt (1931); A. L. Strout, "Hunt, Hazlitt, and Maga" ELH 4 (1937); C. D. Thorpe, "Keats and Hazlitt: a Record of Personal Relationship and Critical Estimate" PMLA 57 (1947); Herschel Baker, William Hazlitt (1962); Jack, OHEL (1963); Elizabeth W. Schneider, The English Romantic Poets and Essayists (1966); A. N. L. Munby, Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons (1971-75); J. A. Houck, William Hazlitt: a Reference Guide (1977); John Kinnard, Hazlitt, Critic of Power (1978); Prance, Companion to Charles Lamb (1983); S. Jones, Hazlitt: a Life (1989); Spenser Encyclopedia, "Hazlitt" (1990) 349-50; David Bromwich, Hazlitt, the MInd of a Critic (1999).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for William Hazlitt:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for William Hazlitt:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(biography records)
1. | 1820 William Drummond: William Hazlitt, in Lectures chiefly on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1820; 1845) 142-43, 147. |