Kevin Gilmartin, William Hazlitt: Political Essayist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), xv + 350pp. ISBN 978-0-19870-931-2; £71.99 (hb)

• Published in: Romantic Textualities no. 23
• Main Authors: Snowdon, David
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cardiff Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, ENCAP 01.07.2020
• Subjects: 19th century; Attitudes; Corruption in government; English literature; Ideology; Literary criticism; Politics; Radicalism
• ISSN: 1748-0116
• DOI: 10.18573/romtext.87

Snowdon, David 21 August 2020 Abstract Tags Tags: English literature, nineteenth century, politics, radicalism, Romanticism, William Hazlitt Those seeking some light reading on one of the early nineteenth-century’s foremost commentators on British literature and culture, or a gentle introduction to Hazlitt’s radical political writing, will not be reaching for this book. Knowing of his noted ability, as a seasoned essayist and journalist, to merge into different social milieus, it is fascinating to see this quality extended in the image of a political chameleon, yet Gilmartin effectively conveys Hazlitt’s consistency in ideology—‘an inflexible commitment to political liberty and radical reform’ (p. 33). [...]Hazlitt wrestles with, or perhaps that should be skilfully juggles, opinions on the liberal politics but frustrating ‘endless disputation’ of Francis Jeffrey’s Edinburgh Review alongside William Gifford’s conservative Quarterly Review (p. 5), while the ultra-Toryism of Blackwood’s with its barbed ‘nick-names and anonymous criticism’ is contemptuously dismissed in his ‘On Public Opinion’ essay (p. 213).