Hazlitt on English Literature: An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature

A curated selection of critical essays offers a chronological survey of English literature from the Elizabethan age through the Romantic revival, assembling lectures, reviews, and character studies on Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, the periodical essayists, novelists, and later poets and critics. The pieces blend close reading with candid personal response and cultural commentary, moving between dramatic and poetic analysis, ethical judgment, and reflections on authorship, conversation, and reading older works. Editorial arrangement, chronology, and notes are provided to clarify quotations and allusions and to make the material accessible for instruction, while the writings consistently showcase a lively, argumentative critical voice attentive to imagination, moral perception, and form.