Hazlitt, William 1778-1830
English essayist

He was born in Maidstone, Kent, the son of a Unitarian minister and spent much of his childhood in Wem, Shropshire. At the age of 15 he was sent to Hackney College, London, to study for the ministry, but he had abandoned the notion by 1796 when he met Coleridge, who encouraged him to write Principles of Human Action (1805). He turned briefly to portrait painting, then published Free Thoughts on Public Affairs (1806), Reply to Malthus (1807), and in 1812 found employment in London on the Morning Chronicle and Examiner. From 1814 to 1830 he wrote essays on literary criticism and other subjects for the Edinburgh Review and the London Magazine. He also lectured at the Surrey Institute on The English Poets, English Comic Writers, and Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1818-21). A passion for Sarah Walker, the daughter of a tailor with whom he lodged, found expression in the frantic Liber Amoris (1823). His Spirit of the Age, or Contemporary Portraits appeared in 1825, and his Life of Napoleon Bonaparte between 1828 and 1830. He was a deadly controversialist, and a master of epigram, invective and withering irony. Other essay collections include Table Talk (1821) and Plain Speaker (1826). His last years darkened by ill health and money difficulties, he died with the words 'Well, I've had a happy life'.

Bibliography: S Jones, William Hazlitt (1982); P Howe, The Life of William Hazlitt (1922)