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The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 08 (of 12) cover

The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 08 (of 12)

Chapter 3: BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
By William Hazlitt
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About This Book

The collection presents a series of lectures and essays that begin by defining wit, humour, and the psychology of laughter, then applies those ideas to readings of English comic writers and the stage. It contrasts Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, surveys Restoration dramatists and periodical essayists, assesses novelists' comic techniques, and interprets Hogarth’s art in relation to comic and grand styles of representation. The prose blends theoretical definition with close literary and artistic analysis, offering character sketches, stylistic judgments, and reflections on how incongruity and disrupted expectation produce comic effect.

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH COMIC WRITERS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The first edition (here reprinted) was published in 1819 in one 8vo. volume (343 pp.), with the following title-page:—‘Lectures on the English Comic Writers. Delivered at the Surry Institution. By William Hazlitt. “It is a very good office one man does another, when he tells him the manner of his being pleased.” Steele. London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 93. Fleet Street. 1819.’ The volume was printed by J. Miller, Noble Street, Cheapside. The ‘third edition’ (the second having been presumably a mere re-print of the first), edited by the author’s son and published by Templeman, appeared in 1841, and included some additions collected from various sources. These additions are referred to in the notes to the present volume. The first edition was republished by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in Bohn’s Library in 1869, and the third edition has quite recently been included in the Temple Classics series ‘under the immediate editorial care of Mr. Austin Dobson’ (1900).

CONTENTS

LECTURE I.
 
PAGE
 
Introductory—On Wit and Humour 5
 
 
LECTURE II.
 
On Shakspeare and Ben Jonson 30
 
 
LECTURE III.
 
On Cowley, Butler, Suckling, Etherege, etc. 49
 
 
LECTURE IV.
 
On Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar 70
 
 
LECTURE V.
 
On the Periodical Essayists 91
 
 
LECTURE VI.
 
On the English Novelists 106
 
 
LECTURE VII.
 
On the Works of Hogarth. On the Grand and Familiar Style of Painting 133
 
 
LECTURE VIII.
 
On the Comic Writers of the last Century 149