This long awaited biography, the result of twenty-five years of research, is the most significant portrayal of Hazlitt to appear in almost seventy years. Hazlitt's image has always been filtered through biographies of the major writers and poets with whom he associated, leaving only a partial picture, and in many cases a distorted one. This insightful biography reveals Hazlitt as a man almost incapacitated by his own diffidence, passionate yet shy...