Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 530 pages, b&w illustrations. A critical biography of the great English writer. William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830) was an essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. Minor tape repair to dust jacket. Clean copy.