Amoris

One or two positive reviews appeared, such as the one in the Globe, June 7, 1823: “The Liber Amoris is unique in the English language; and as, possibly, the first book in its fervour, its vehemency, and its careless exposure of passion and weakness — of sentiments and sensations which the common race of mankind seek most studiously to mystify or conceal — that exhibits a portion of the most distinguishing characteristics of Rousseau, it ought to be generally praised”.

March « 2009 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

One or two positive reviews appeared, such as the one in the Globe, June 7, 1823: “The Liber Amoris is unique in the English language; and as, possibly, the first book in its fervour, its vehemency, and its careless exposure of passion and weakness — of sentiments and sensations which the common race of mankind seek most studiously to mystify or conceal — that exhibits a portion of the most distinguishing characteristics of Rousseau, it ought to be generally praised”.

william hazlitt | the man of letters « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

Critics have been divided as to the literary merits of Liber Amoris, which is quite unlike anything else Hazlitt ever wrote.

March « 2009 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

Critics have been divided as to the literary merits of Liber Amoris, which is quite unlike anything else Hazlitt ever wrote.

william hazlitt | the man of letters « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

Nor did it help that he published a startlingly candid sexual memoir, Liber Amoris, which a reviewer of the time attacked as a “precious record of vulgarity and nastiness” that revealed the author “in all the nakedness of his conceit, selfishness, slavering sensuality, filthy profligacy and howling idiotcy.”

March « 2009 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

Nor did it help that he published a startlingly candid sexual memoir, Liber Amoris, which a reviewer of the time attacked as a “precious record of vulgarity and nastiness” that revealed the author “in all the nakedness of his conceit, selfishness, slavering sensuality, filthy profligacy and howling idiotcy.”

william hazlitt | the man of letters « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

But catharsis was also provided by his recording the course of his love in a thinly disguised fictional account, published anonymously in May 1823 as Liber Amoris; or, The New Pygmalion.

william hazlitt | the man of letters « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

But catharsis was also provided by his recording the course of his love in a thinly disguised fictional account, published anonymously in May 1823 as Liber Amoris; or, The New Pygmalion.

March « 2009 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2009

In the unrequited aftermath, too used to turning his life and his own feelings about it into literary material, he published "Liber Amoris," a thinly disguised and otherwise very frank account of his passion for Walker.

The Great Provoker 2009

"One day," he writes, "'Liber Amoris' will be given its due as a classic of Romantic prose."

The Great Provoker 2009