"Hazlitt in Lo..."

TLS tells me that a new book has been published on the circumstances behind critc and essayist's William Hazlitt's book Liber Amoris (Book of Love), which recounts his unsuccessful affair, or wooing, of the much younger daughter of his landlord. I'm interested in Hazlitt, one, because he was one of the three precursors to George Orwell I talked about in my dissertation, and I thankfully never got to the point where I never wanted to hear another thing about any of them again. Two--and I only began to realize this as I read the book--he was the great-grandfather of the blog, if you consider the well-written blog to be a form of the personal essay in which the writer creates a consistent persona, meant to be congruent with the writer if not entirely so, and writes about what he or she is thinking about or feeling or whatever the hell he or she likes. Hazlitt wrote wonderful essays on, among other subjects, meeting Wordsworth and Coleridge, the use of common language in formal writing, and even prizefighting.

So even though it's only been published in England, I order the book through an Amazon.com affiliate, and it arrives just as I finish up my mandatory reading for now. It's very nicely done: it gives the background to the affair, what probably happened (or didn't), how Hazlitt reconstructed it in his essays, in his letters, and then in Liber Amoris. I'm reaching the end as Liber Amoris is published--get to the last page, 208--and realize that it isn't the end of this book! Page 208 on the left-hand side ends in the middle of an indented quotation! I look on Amazon.com again and see the book is 288 pages long. Well, at least I know how the story ends...