The Spirit of the Age
Title page of The Spirit of the Age 2nd London edition
|
|
| Author | William Hazlitt |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Social criticism, Biography |
| Published | 11 January 1825 (Henry Colburn) |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Liber Amoris: Or, The New Pygmalion |
| Followed by | The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things |
| Text | at |
The Spirit of the Age (full title The Spirit of the Age: Or, Contemporary Portraits) is a collection of character sketches by the early 19th century English essayist, literary critic, and social commentator William Hazlitt, portraying 25 men, mostly British, whom he believed to represent significant trends in the thought, literature, and politics of his time. The subjects include thinkers, social reformers, politicians, poets, essayists, and novelists, many of whom Hazlitt was personally acquainted with or had encountered. Originally appearing in English periodicals, mostly The New Monthly Magazine in 1824, the essays were collected with several others written for the purpose and published in book form in 1825.
The Spirit of the Age was one of Hazlitt's most successful books. It is frequently judged to be his masterpiece, even "the crowning ornament of Hazlitt's career, and ... one of the lasting glories of nineteenth-century criticism." Hazlitt was also a painter and an art critic, yet no artists number among the subjects of these essays. His artistic and critical sensibility, however, infused his prose style—Hazlitt was later judged to be one of the greatest of English prose stylists as well—enabling his appreciation of portrait painting to help him bring his subjects to life. His experience as a literary, political, and social critic contributed to Hazlitt's solid understanding of his subjects' achievements, and his judgements of his contemporaries were later often deemed to have held good after nearly two centuries.
The Spirit of the Age, despite its essays' uneven quality, has been generally agreed to provide "a vivid panorama of the age". Yet, missing an introductory or concluding chapter, and with few explicit references to any themes, it was for long also judged as lacking in coherence and hastily thrown together. More recently, critics have found in it a unity of design, with the themes emerging gradually, by implication, in the course of the essays and even supported by their grouping and presentation.
Hazlitt was well prepared to write The Spirit of the Age. Hackney College, where he studied for two years, was known for fostering radical ideas, immersing him in the spirit of the previous age, and a generation later helping him understand changes he had observed in British society. He was befriended in his early years by the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, who at that time shared his radical thinking, and soon he entered the circle of reformist philosopher William Godwin. His brother John was also responsible for helping him connect with other like-minded souls, leading him to the center of London intellectual culture, where he met others who, years later, along with Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Godwin, would be brought to life in this book, particularly Charles Lamb and, some time afterward, Leigh Hunt.
...
Wikipedia