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Appearing as part of his Table-Talk series, a conversational series written on topics concerning every day issues, William Hazlitt wrote "On the Pleasure of Hating" in 1823 during a bitter period of his life, amidst rising controversy over his previous works, as well as the dissolution of his marriage. Disgusted with the flowery romantic literature which was flourishing in that post-French Revolution period, Hazlitt drew inspiration from the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, and various well-known English poets. He became known as one of the first English writers to make a profession of descriptive criticism. Fascinated with the extremes of human capabilities, Hazlitt wrote this essay as a plea for the understanding not merely of the pleasures of hating, but of the pleasures of realism. This collection includes seven essays: "The Fight," "The Indian Jugglers," "On the Spirit of Monarchy," "What is the People?", "What is the People? (concluded)," "On Reason and Imagination," and "On the Pleasure of Hating." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

I absolutely love Hazlitt - everyone does tacitly and implicitly!
This rather short collection contains six works by William Hazlitt. The first is "The Fight" which is rather forgettable: "We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, and have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them". The second is "The Indian Jugglers" which is quite good: "Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice." The third is "On the Spirit of Monarchy," which if one switches `Tories' for `Democrats' and `Whigs' for `Republicans' yields an amazingly accurate description of the current state of affairs in American politics: "The right and the wrong are of little consequence, compared to the in and the out." The fourth is "What is the People?" and is also very good: "There is but a limited earth and a limited fertility to supply the demands both of Government and people; and what the one gains in the division of the spoil, beyond its average proportion, the other must needs go without." The fifth is "On Reason and Imagination" and is a terrific account of the human condition: "Man is (so to speak) an endless and infinitely varied repetition: and if we know what one man feels, we so far know what a thousand feel in the sanctuary of their being. Our feeling of general humanity is at once an aggregate of a thousand different truths, and it is also the same truth a thousand times told."

The sixth is "On the Pleasure of Hating" and is one of the best and most timeless screeds ever written. There are so many fantastic quotes I could pull from this short essay; here is just one: "We grow tired of ever thing but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects." I loved this book and highly recommend it. Some contemporary books that contain many of the same elements and same flavor are: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives and Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

Still as Relevant Now as Then
This little book of essays punctured my reluctance to tackle anything written more than a hundred years ago. What a foolish prejudice!

From the essay "Indian Jugglers": "No man is truly great, who is great only in his lifetime." Which brought to mind modern celebrity and the petty inflations of the media, with whom Hazlitt was familar in his own time, dissecting the great and ungreat personages, and commenting on the qualities that made them so or not.

From "On the Spirit of Monarchy": "The right and the wrong are of little consequence, compared to the in and the out," Hazlitt says, amidst this acerbic essay on courts and kings, relevant as well to contemporary life, if not the enduring state of social affairs in whatever age.

From "Reason and Imagination," a biting commentary on detached reasoning versus "natural feeling," with examples that brought to mind "enhanced interrogation,"about which Hazlitt writes (while discussing slavery): "Practices, the mention of which make the flesh creep, and that affront the light of day, ought to be put down the instant they are known, without inquiry and without repeal."

And the remarkable title essay, "On the Pleasure of Hating," which is so consistent and high-flying throughout that every phrase could be quoted and ruminated upon for its insight and application."
I Think, Therefore Who Am I?

Great Prose, Great Quotes, Rambling Content
William Hazlitt was no doubt a great writer, this small book contains six essays he wrote in the 1820s. While his prose makes for pleasant reading, I am a pragmatist and expect writing to lead to a purpose. I enjoy key learnings or to be delighted and entertained. This book delivered a few great quotes, one among them was "Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust:Hatred alone is immortal". The essays are a scattering of the authors thoughts about a boxing match, the monarchy, slavery,indian jugglers and cynicism about the world and his own writing. This book for me just discussed things I could care less about and at the end of reading it I thought what was the point of his writings. It seemed like a diary more than essays. I would skip reading this one book in the penguin great idea series, the others are excellent.

"No man is truly great, who is great only in his lifetime."
"What abortions are these Essays!" William Hazlitt laments in 'The Indian Jugglers' - the second essay in this lovely little tome. "What errors, whats ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do." Hazlitt is, of course, selling himself very short. I had never heard of Hazlitt (1778 - 1830) until I saw the Penguin Great Ideas series. The title of this sleak paperback intrigued me, since I am a true misanthrope at heart. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that Hazlitt was more than just another intellectual grump. Instead he proves himself a champion of liberality and the common man, even if he is more than a little sick of humanity at large.

The brunt of his anger is directed at hereditary monarchy, loyalist Torys, and the idea of 'Legitimacy.' But don't think that dates or couches his speech firmly on England's shores. His speeches on those subjects could just as easily be applied to the power structure of modern economy and government:

"He who has the greatest power put into his hands, will only become impatient of any restraint in the use of it. To have the welfare and the lives of millions placed at our disposal, is a sort of warrant, a challenge to squander them without mercy."

And another favorite, "Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people."

But of course the shining star is the title essay. When writing down quotes from 'On The Pleasure of Hating' I found myself taking down whole pages. I will not quote that much, but only this extended passage from the cover:

"Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bitter-sweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal."

In this collection you will see passioned arguments against slavery 40 years before the end of the civil war. You will see bitter rationalism applied to hell and religion at large. But most of all you will see essays from a man whom was voted one of the best literary essayists England ever produced. I wasn't fond of 'The Fight', and so I gave this a 4 of 5. But I would recommend it to anyone with a mind.

The Pleasure of reading Hazlitt.
"Hatred alone is immortal," Hazlitt observes in his title essay.Children kill flies for sport.Men assemble in crowds with eager enthusiasm to witness a tragedy.Cannibals eat their enemies.Christians cast those who differ from them into hell-fire for the glory of God.Hatred turns religion into bigotry, patriotism into war, and others' defects into ridicule."Seeing all of this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others and ignorance of ourselves--seeing custom prevail over excellence, itself giving way to to infamy-mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong, always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself?Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough" (p. 119).

Praised for his eloquent writing style, and reviled by conservatives for his radical politics, I encountered essayist and literary critic, William Hazlitt (1778-1830), for the first time while reading my way through the Penguin Great Ideas series. Although Hazlitt is best known work for THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, a collection of portraits of his contemporaries, Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Jeremy Bentham, and Sir Walter Scott, this edition includes several of Hazlitt's best-known essays, "The Fight," "The Indian Jugglers," "On the Spirit of Monarchy," "What is the People?" "On Reason and Imagination," and "The Pleasure of Hating." His engaging insights into art, culture, politics, and philosophy, together with his superb prose, make him a pleasure to read.It is perhaps impossible to imagine a contemporary writer with Hazlitt's talent and keen intellect. I'm eager to return to Hazlitt by adding the Oxford World Classics SELECTED WRITINGS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT (1999) and METROPOLITAN WRITINGS (2005) to my reading list.

G. Merritt ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A superb collection
This small collection of prose reveals Hazlitt as one of the great writers in English.Here are superb essays on politics, poetry, art and philosophy.The criticism of Shakespeare and Wordsworth is a marvel to read, as are his devastating polemics "On Fashion" and "On Public Opinion."Hazlitt's prose is masterly; muscular yet nuanced.Just leafing through the collection your eye is caught by startling pieces of insight, eloquently expressed.Furthermore, his writing reveals not only a great deal of knowledge, but more importantly, wisdom, which is a quality perhaps lacking amongst some intellectuals!This point is made clear in one of his aphorisms, which are characteristically witty and paradoxical:

"Buonaparte observes that the diplomatists of the new school were no match for those brought up under the ancien regime.The reason probably is, that the modern style of intellect inclines to abstract reasoning and general propositions, and pays less attention to individual character, interests, and circumstances.The moderns have, therefore...a greater knowledge of things, but less of the world."

Hazlitt!
William Hazlitt, though not much read today, remains one of the greatest prose stylists of the language, and with Dequincey, one of the two best of the romantic age.A must! ... Read more

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William Hazlitt is widely considered to be one of the greatest literature critics of all time. This new edition presents Hazlitt's analysis of Shakespeare's plays and insights into the author's timeless characters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Characters of Shakespeare"s Plays
The collection of essays, Characters of Shakespeare"s Plays, by William Hazlitt discusses exactly what you might think from reading the title.This book from about 1817 tells us what someone who was not just anyone thought of Shakespeare's plays and, most significantly for Hazlitt, those incredibly drawn characters.Hazlitt praised Shakespeare and, in his view, never enough.If the remedial reading of Shakespeare in high school tainted your perceptions of the plays with rote study of lines and characters supplemented with relentless quizing and testing, consider reading this author who, although he may never change your mind about Shakespeare, might delight you anyhow.Hazlitt's enthusiasm is infectious.Hazlitt rates prominently among the great essayists from Montaigne to Bacon.Others quote him and emulate him.Read him and you will know who he has influenced.Try to understand his theories but enjoy his style.His politics may be ancient but everyone's will be one day. ... Read more

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An appreciation of essayist, lecturer and radical pamphleteer, William Hazlitt, and his works. It provides both a re-evaluation of the aesthetics of Romanticism and a sustained intellectual portrait. ... Read more

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Hazlitt is one of the greatest masters of English prose style and this new selection demonstrates the variety and richness of his writing. The volume includes classic pieces of drama and literature criticism, such as his essays on Shakespeare and Coleridge, as well as less well-known material from his social and political journalism. This collection encourages the reader to reconsider the nature of critical writing, which Hazlitt transforms into an art form. ... Read more

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A pioneer work in biography of Hazlitt, told largely in the words of various witnesses of events and episodes in Hazlitt's life. ... Read more

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This file includes: Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, Lectures on the English Poets, Liber Amoris or The New Pygmaliion, The Spirit of the Age, and Table-Talk: Essays on Men and Manners. According to Wikipedia: "William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language,[1][2] placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell,[3][4] but his work is currently little-read and mostly out of print.[5][6] During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the nineteenth-century literary canon, such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb, and Stendhal." ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Painful Love Story
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was one of the best writers of essays in the English language, with a powerful, muscular, and modern prose style.He wrote about politics, the arts, literature, his friends (and former friends--he had a talent for alienating many of them) among the Romantics, including Coleridge and Wordsworth.He also wrote, thoughtfully and often charmingly, about himself and his own experiences._Liber Amoris_, however, is an autobiographical account of a much more harrowing kind.It's the story of Hazlitt's love affair with the daughter of his landlady.Never very good with women (his first marriage was practically arranged by his best friend and fellow essayist, Charles Lamb), Hazlitt proved himself horribly maladroit in the handling of this romance.It was ill-conceived from the start.In 1820 Hazlitt was 43 and Sarah Walker was 19; Hazlitt, though estranged from his wife, was not yet divorced; and, as becomes clear over the course of the story, Sarah was actually much more worldly than Hazlitt himself.The failure of the affair brought Hazlitt to the brink of suicide; writing about it seems to have been his way of pulling himself back towards life by making sense of what had happened to him.

Why read a love story that sounds so grim?Hazlitt's contemporaries wondered the same thing, and were shocked by its publication in 1823, partially because, as Ronald Blythe put it in the introduction to my edition of _Liber Amoris_, "To write it, Hazlitt had to abandon the only thing which could have made it even remotely socially acceptable--dignity."The Victorians also hated the story because of Hazlitt's acknowledgment of a physical relationship between him and Sarah--there's nothing graphic by any stretch of the imagination in the book beyond a few kisses, but this was enough to offend delicate 19th century sensibilities.

But from a twenty-first century vantage point, most of these concerns have fallen away.We live in a confessional age where memoirists put their most tortured secrets on paper for public consumption; the idea of sexuality outside the bonds of marriage no longer has the power to make most of us faint dead away; and Hazlitt's method of composition seems as contemporary and up-to-the-minute as when it was written, a collage of dialogue, letters real and imaginary, and short, almost aphoristic musings on the nature of love and loss.Unobscured by shock and scandal, today _Liber Amoris_ bears incredible emotional force, because it shows without any attempt at prettification or prevarication a man in the throws of a doomed, obsessive, and largely unrequited love.The vast portion of the human race has felt what Hazlitt feels here: pathetic, dejected, undesired, aware of all that, and yet filled with an inexplicable longing, the sense that only one other person's nature fully appreciates his own.The reason to read and to admire _Liber Amoris_ is its unparalleled courage in committing to paper something that, whether it reflects well or ill on the teller of the tale, resonates with every human's experience. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description
This book has DirectLink Technology built into the formatting. This means that we have made it easy for you to navigate the various chapters of this book. Some other versions of this book may not have the DirectLink technology built into them. We can guarantee that if you buy this version of the book it will be formatted perfectly on your Kindle. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Romanticism is where the modern age begins, and Hazlitt was its most articulate spokesman. No one else had the ability to see it whole; no one else knew so many of its politicians, poets, and philosophers. In this first full biography, Duncan Wu draws upon over a decade of archival research to explore all aspects of Hazlitt's life, from his early aspirations to become a painter, his engagement with revolutionary politics, his rise to prominence as one of England's greatest literary critics, and the disillusionment and poverty of his final years. Along the way, Wu reveals countless new details concerning Hazlitt's relationships with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, William Godwin, J. M. W. Turner, and other important figures of the Romantic era. But Wu sees Hazlitt as an essentially modern writer who took political sketch-writing to a new level, invented sports commentary as we know it, and created the essay-form as it is practiced in our own time. Painstakingly researched and filled with original insight, this biography benefits also from Wu's New Writings of William Hazlitt, many of which make their appearance here, illuminating obscure passages of Hazlitt's life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A fascinating portrait of a 'jobbing writer' of two centuries ago
I've long loved Hazlitt's essays, and one of my most cherished possessions is a first edition of his Surrey Institute lectures on the English poets. But until now I had waited in vain for a biography that would do justice to this remarkable figure and the world he inhabited.

Wu is unabashed partisan of Hazlitt (which is probably why he undertook this task in the first place; Hazlitt is one of those figures now largely overlooked, along with Leigh Hunt, as the spotlight shines on the Romantic poets rather than on their prose-writing counterparts) and that enthusiasm for sharing Hazlitt's side in any quarrel can sometimes become a bit wearying. (I'm a fan of Hazlitt's, but find it hard to muster up much enthusiasm for HIS enthusiasm for Napoleon, for instance.) But where Wu succeeds brilliantly is in bringing alive the spirit of the age in which Hazlitt lived and wrote: the era which saw the triumph of the American Revolution (some of his earliest years were spent in the just-born United States) and then the French Revolution, followed by a British crackdown on anything that smelled like 'subversion'. Wu's case for Hazlitt as the first 'modern' man rests on the fact that he saw clearly what could be: a world in which birthright did not determine status or success, and where a man (or woman) could succeed on his or her own merits without having to grovel and win patronage from his social superiors but intellectual inferiors.

A testimony to the power of this biography is the fact that weeks after reading it, the events that Wu describes -- Hazlitt's financial struggles, his occasional triumphs, his tendency to become his own worst enemy and his lack of discretion -- continue to resonate in my memory. I'll be reading or thinking about something completely different, and suddenly a stray word or idea will push my mind back to Hazlitt and his falling out with some of his earliest friends, such as Coleridge, or to his friendship with Charles and Mary Lamb, or his fascination with the theater and his ability to spot some of his era's biggest talents the first time they strode across the stage. Best of all, Wu captures the discomfort of a young man, raised in a non-conformist yet religious household, who loses his faith, who must carve out a place for himself as a 'jobbing writer' in a world that has no place for non-conformists, whether that non-conformity is religious or social in nature. While reading this, I feel as if I inhabited the streets in which my prized first edition was printed.

Even if you're not interested in Hazlitt the person, this book is a great introduction to his times -- his path crossed that of all the great literary figures of his generation, and he engaged in his writings all the major themes, from the need for 'gusto' in life to the individual experience of nature that was part of the romantic era. (Hazlitt himself, however, still strikes me as more professional skeptic than a classic Romantic -- or perhaps, a Curmudgeonly Romantic?) And even if you're not interested in reading about the late 18th and early 19th century literary world, do pick up some of Hazlitt's essays. They are, indeed, treasures in their own right.

Highly recommended to anyone interested in this era, and in the Romantic poets or essay-writing.

The First?
A detailed academic biography of a long-dead English essayist and journalist. Professor Duncan Wu, while certainly an expert on his subject, comes across as an unwavering apologist for the difficult Mr. Hazlitt: a man who was a consistent financial deadbeat, who lacked good moral behavior toward women, who often was malicious in print towards friends and acquaintances, and who was a big fan of the dictator Napoleon.

That Mr. Hazlitt was an excellent writer and championed many good causes (e.g., attacking the emptiness of the British monarchy and supporting the right to free speech) hardly justifies him in having been a first-class jerk.

As for the subtitle of the book "The First Modern Man", it is quite a claim and one I think wildly overstated.

If you have a keen interest in William Hazlitt's life, read this book.
If not, which is probably most of the world, you can safely take a pass.

The Voice of the Romantic Period
William Hazlitt was a colorful figure in English literary circles in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. An essayist and journalist, he expressed strong opinions, even against works done by his friends (among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth). He had tried being a painter and had done portraits of both the aforementioned, but never really succeeded at that calling, in part due to his inability to flatter his subjects. He had difficulty with is relationships, eventually being divorced by his wife, and mostly staying to prostitutes and "loose women."However, his literary works were, at times, both exalted and decried, and have in the most part fallen out of favor (and print). Wu's "William Hazlitt" doesn't attempt to take an objective position, but, instead, presents Hazlitt as one of the great essayists of the English language and the voice of the Romantic Period. By not maintaining a neutral position with Hazlett's place in literary history, Wu loses some credibility, but gains it back in the absolute wealth of research and detail to which he includes in the book.
Pieced together from hundreds of sources, "William Hazlitt" is a readable, intriguing biography of a passionate man, during a turbulent time. ... Read more

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Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by William Carew Hazlitt is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of William Carew Hazlitt then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Drama / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Humor / General; Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / Drama; Literary Criticism / Poetry; Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more