HAZLITT, William.

£500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters. First edition of "a fine introduction to the sharpness of Hazlitt's prose and the spice of his convictions" (ODNB), in a handsome Zaehnsdorf binding. Hazlitt ranges from broader political and literary analyses to narrower character studies of Burke, Pitt, and Fox, before concluding with a series of essays reflecting on the political economy of Thomas Malthus. This copy bears on the front pastedown the attractive 1897 bookplate of John Wilkinson Crake (c.1842-1918). Crake, a minister in Oldham, Lancashire, appropriately chooses for his bookplate a quote from one of Hazlitt's final essays (not in this collection): "Books let us go into the souls of other men, and lay open to us the secrets of our own".

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