Product Description

Analysing Hazlitt's radicalism and its foundations in Unitarian culture, Paulin argues that he was in effect a republican epic poet in prose - as distinct from prose poet - and a crucially important critic who has been given nothing like his due. He offers a fully rounded literary portrait with great depth and detail.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55477 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
I love this book; it's a delight to see Paulin re-establish this great writer and, I hope, send people scurrying back to his work. Although Hazlitt himself was self-consciously aware of the supposed inferiority of prose-writing, no one better shatters that myth. In the breadth of his work he combines the essential spadework of a journalist giving pen-portraits of low life, with the skills of a sophisticated literary critic and political polemicist. Throughout runs the conscious aim to employ prose which will be both supple and strong, sometimes almost to the point of aggression. Three cheers for the man who defies the mean, modern injunction 'never write three adjectives where one will do'; in the world of such passionate ideas three can hardly be enough, if they are chosen with Hazlitt's precision, for meaning, variety, sensuousness, scansion and sound. In covering Hazlitt's life, the people he admired, despised or hated, Paulin gives a rich portrait of the era, a joy in itself. But this book's most wonderful achievement is to remind us of a neglected master of our language, and to reassert the glory of written English at its best. Review by LINDSEY DAVIS (Kirkus UK)