While acknowledging the scope of PP Howe’s Centenary Edition of Hazlitt’s complete works, Duncan Wu is swift to demonstrate the difference in his approach and use of copy texts. Howe took as copy text a set by Waller and Glover published 1902-6, thus perpetuating the minor errors and editorial ideosyncracies of the earlier edition. ‘While paying tribute to the work of my predecessors it is an important element in my procedure that neither Howe nor Waller and Glover has provided copy-text at any point; Hazlitt’s lifetime editions and manuscripts take priority throughout.’ Duncan Wu, Introduction to the edition The new edition takes all copy texts from early printed sources, collated with lifetime editions and manuscripts. We do not claim to supersede Howe, but wish to complement, and supplement, him. The new edition thus succeeds in its aim of providing today’s Hazlitt scholars with a selection of highly accurate resource texts, further enhanced by editorial matter from eminent academics. The set is fit to stand alone as a primary resource in any library which does not have an older Hazlitt edition, and also has a place beside Howe as an authoritative, up-to-date collection, indispensable to modern research. Duncan Wu has written a detailed account of the editorial policy in his introduction to the edition, which you can read online- click here to view the introduction. You can also read the reviews of our set on this page, several of which provide a detailed comparison between the Howe and the Pickering sets- click here for reviews. William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was probably the most distinguished of the non-fiction prose writers to emerge from the Romantic period; an associate of Wordsworth and Coleridge, he went on to write some of the greatest essays in the English language. The Spirit of the Age, a collection of contemporary portraits or newspaper profiles, is acknowledged as a critical masterpiece, but a number of his other works - Political Essays, The Plain Speaker, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, A View of the English Stage, The Round Table, Table Talk - have been too long neglected and most of his writings are out of print. Uniquely, Hazlitt brings a knowledge of philosophy, history, drama, politics and the visual arts to his literary criticism.