About the Book
William Hazlitt is viewed by many as one of the most distinguished of the non-fiction prose writers to emerge from the Romantic period. This nine-volume edition collects all his major works in complete form.
Table of Contents:
Volume 1 An Essay on the Principles of Human Action Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, Volume 2 The Round Table Lectures on the English Poets, Volume 3 A View of the English Stage, Volume 4 Political Essays, Volume 5 Lectures on the English Comic Writers, Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, A Letter to William Gifford, Esq., Volume 6 Table Talk, Volume 7 Liber Amoris, The Spirit of the Age, Volume 8 The Plain Speaker, Volume 9 Uncollected Essays
Review :
'... one great value of the Pickering and Chatto selection from Hazlitt is that it provides us with a text and notes that are accurate and up to date. All references take us, with great precision, to pages in current, standard editions. Texts have been scrutinized to the highest standards and corrected where necessary. Additionally, the editor, Duncan Wu, provides a list of errors that he has discovered in his copy-texts at the beginning of each volume. I note that his annotations add considerably to the points of information provided by his predecessors... In short, this is a magnificent work of scholarship for which one can only be grateful.' - R S Tomlinson, The Charles Lamb Bulletin 'Wu rightly and generously pays tribute to Howe on a number of occasions, but he does not use Howe's text in any instance, and the texts he presents are preferable to Howe's for several reasons. Wu is much more consistent than Howe in his use of copytext, preferring in each instance an early printed source. Wu collates his text with lifetime editions and with manuscripts on a far more rigorous and extensive scale than Howe. Wu restores words and phrases silently (and sometimes inexplicably) omitted by Howe. And Wu emends the text when it is necessary for the sense; Howe is often curiously reluctant in this regard. The result is a text edited to the highest modern standards.' - Robert Morrison, Essays in Criticism 'For sheer consistency of talent in what he produced over a fraught and distracted life, you cannot beat Hazlitt... Of Hazlitt's 60 or so essays, a higher proportion even than Bacon's are winners. And nearly all are as fresh and sinewy as when first written (you can read them in the superb new nine-volume edition of his Works by Pickering and Chatto).' - Paul Johnson, The Spectator 'The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt, edited by Duncan Wu with an introduction by Tom Paulin, runs to a handsome nine volumes and covers the period between 1805 and 1826 with a range of editorial apparatus. While the value of this publication is clear for all libraries that do not hold earlier Hazlitt editions, Wu's editorial introduction also demonstrates how his new edition corrects P. P. Howe's Complete Works of William Hazlitt of 1930, still held by many libraries. While this new selection cannot entirely supersede Howe's comprehensiveness, as Wu is quick to acknowledge, Wu shows how his own edition improves upon and corrects Howe and makes Hazlitt fresh to a contemporary audience. Wu distinguishes his edition from that of Howe by showing firstly that Howe perpetuated the mistakes of his predecessors by failing to return to original copy-texts but rather following previously published editions of the critic's work. Wu, by contrast has returned to first edition and to Hazlitt's own manuscripts where these are available. As well as enabling Wu to present corrected versions of Hazlitt's texts, the return to manuscript also reveals interesting aspects of Hazlitt's composition methods, such as his tendency to make copious alterations at proof stage. This new edition also updates the scholarly apparatus, referring readers to current critical and editorial sources, where Howe's references are now necessarily often obsolete. Wu's edition also adds two texts to the canon: 'To the Monthly Reviewers', and a full version of ' On the Punishment of Death'... This is a beautifully presented edition and a fine addition to Hazlitt scholarship.' - Leonora Nattrass, British Association of Romantic Studies Bulletin and Review 'Nul doute que cette magnifique publication regroupant les grands essais de Hazlitt (avec tout l'appareil critique necessaire, et particulierement son elucidation des nombreuses citations qui emaillent le texte) contribuera a faire grandir le nombre de ses admiratuers, et suscitera l'interet des chercheurs pour une des oeuvres les plus remarquables du Romantisme, par sa richesse et par l'eclat, a nul autre pareil, de son ecriture.' - Denis Bonnecase, Etudes Anglaises Read a review of this edition in Romanticism on the Net Excerpt from this review: 'Wu's edition is aimed at libraries, and I strongly encourage every one of them to order their set, even if the P. P. Howe edition already graces their shelves. Indeed, Wu's edition offers a clear improvement over Howe for the copy-texts chosen for each volume, as well as for the annotations and headnotes Wu provides. Although this edition is limited to selected works, as opposed to Howe's complete edition, it clearly contains the best of Hazlitt, with all his major publications and a good selection of uncollected essays. Wu's edition should contribute to a general revaluation of Hazlitt's work and his importance not only as a theatre critic, but also as one of the best essayists of the Romantic period, a figure very much involved in contemporary politics, and the author of a most unique novel.' -Michael Eberle-Sinatra, Romanticism on the Net '... Wu's introduction shows how his own edition improves upon and corrects Howe, and in this way Wu's texts must be taken in preference to Howe's where they exist. Wu distinguishes his edition from that of Howe by showing firstly that Howe perpetuated the mistakes of his predecessors by failing to return to original copy-texts, secondly by drawing attention to his own use of manuscript sources where available to shed interesting light on Hazlitt's methods of composition, and thirdly by noting that Howe's references are now often useless as they refer us to obsolete editions of Hazlitt's sources. Moreover, Wu includes two previously unpublished Hazlitt texts: 'To the Monthly Reviewers', and a full version of 'On the Punishment of Death'... This is a beautifully presented edition and a fine addition to Hazlitt scholarship.' -Year's Work in English Studies 'This wonderful new edition is built on the soundest of beliefs in Hazlitt's importance. Duncan Wu, an editor self-effacingly devoted to his task, has produced, in nine volumes, a selection that does much more than "put back into circulation" as he puts it, "some of the greatest prose non-fiction in the language".' - Mark Storey, Romanticism 'The new nine volume Pickering & Chatto edition promises to carry forward triumphantly the whole Hazlittian rehabilitation across every frontier and into the next century.' -Michael Foot 'It makes sense to publish a new edition of Hazlett simply because, as the best prose writer, the master essayist and, in many ways, the finest critic of his age, he deserves it; but it also makes sense because, as a commentator on literature, politics, art, drama, and on his contemporaries in those fields, he is a wonderful "resource" for all sorts of scholarly work - no library can afford to be without him.' - Professor Christopher Salvesen, University of Reading 'This nine-volume work, handsomely bound and fastidiously edited, contains most of Hazlitt's writings, including pieces which have never before been published in collected form. I have been roaming about in it with enormous pleasure. Hazlitt is now coming to be recognised as one of our greatest prose-writers, and this set is absolutely indispensible to anyone who recognises and rejoices in his genius.' - Paul Johnson 'All in all this is a most welcome addition to the world of Hazlitt studies, to Romantic studies more broadly, and indeed to the history of English criticism. It brings some improved texts, notes, and apparatuses to Hazlitt's great central body of work. Above all, it offers in print for the first time in a while some of the most extraordinarily powerful prose in the language.' - James Chandler, Keats-Shelley Journal
