Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | The Familiar Essay - Elements Of Form And Style

ELEMENTS OF FORM AND STYLE

William Hazlitt

SOURCE: "On Familiar Style," in Romantic Prose of the Early Nineteenth Century, edited by Carl H. Grabo, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927, pp. 3-12.

[Hazlitt was one of the leading essayists of the early nineteenth century. Influenced by the concise social commentary of Joseph Addison's Spectator essays and by the personal tone of Michel de Montaigne's essays, Hazlitt developed what became known as the familiar essay. Characterized by conversational diction and personal opinion on topics ranging from English poets to washerwomen, his familiar style is best represented by the essays in The Round Table (1817), Table-Talk (1821-22), and The Plain Speaker (1826). While he also produced an important body of critical works, Hazlitt's familiar essays are the most esteemed and successful of his writings. In the following essay, originally published in the second volume of Table...

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