William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man [Hardcover]

Duncan Wu (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0199549583 | ISBN-13: 978-0199549580 | Publication Date: November 15, 2008 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If this workmanlike biography, by the editor of the two-volume New Writings of William Hazlitt, does not live up to the expansive promise of its subtitle, it nonetheless extends a welcome new hand to a transitional figure of the romantic age. Wu admirably reveals his subject's faults and virtues at every point of a crowded life. Always hard up for cash, and often considering himself a failure in the eyes of his Unitarian minister father, Hazlitt (1788–1830) was generally celebrated as a journalist and prose stylist by his contemporaries. He was also an exceptional philosopher and painter. Among his intimates, Hazlitt counted Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Coleridge, Bryon and Keats, Charles Lamb and Robert Southey. Hazlitt was a passionate lover of many women and frequent brothel visitor, all of which doomed his marriage to a wealthy woman from the start. He was also done in by an understandably suspicious brother-in-law. Hazlitt has been more fortunate in his modern critics, among them Somerset Maugham and Virginia Woolf. As Wu notes, Hazlitt's modernity depends on his penetrating grasp of psychology and on his place as the father of modern literary criticism. 30 b&w illus. (Jan.)
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Review

"Fun to read."--The New Yorker

"Excellent biography of the criticWu's splendidly detailed portrait could scarcely be more timely."--arper's

"Wu's finely attuned to his subject's qualities and sympathetic to the many personal, professional, and religious struggles that so complicated Hazlitt's tumultuous life."--The Atlantic

"A broad, persuasive argument, an astonishingly detailed account of Hazlitt's life...We sink into Hazlitt's world itself."-Saul Rosenberg, The Wall Street Journal

"A distinctly eye-opening biography."-Washingtonpost.com

"This book is written in an entertaining style, with liberal quotations from Hazlitt's essays, criticism, and lettersWu's effort benefits from newly discovered documents and his passionate defense of his subject. This should be the standard by which all future biographies will be judged."-Library Journal

"Wu admirably reveals his subject's faults and virtues at every point of a crowded life."-Publishers Weekly

"A much needed concise, clear and readable account." - The Independent

"An eminently clear, readable and altogether available account of Hazlitt's life, based on staggeringly impressive research. Read it, by all means."--The Wordsworth Circle

"An exceptional study." -- Times Higher Education Supplement

"Wu's biography is, like its subject, passionately partisan, and throws objectivity to the winds."-- Sunday Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (November 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199549583
• ISBN-13: 978-0199549580
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,512,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating portrait of a 'jobbing writer' of two centuries ago, January 21, 2010

By 

S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man (Hardcover)

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.

4 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The First?, February 28, 2009

By 

Christian Schlect (Yakima, Washington/USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man (Hardcover)

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.