The Spirit of the Age, extra-illustrated copy

What it is

This is a grangered copy of the second edition of The Spirit of the Age, or Contemporary Portraits by William Hazlitt. The title page reads London: Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street, 1825. The collection record describes 34 engraved plates, mostly portraits by various artists, one manuscript leaf from Washington Irving's Life of George Washington, and 22 autograph letters and manuscripts from literary figures discussed in the book. The record gives the date as 1787, but the title page dates this edition to 1825. The archive holds a scanned PDF of the book.

Why it matters

Hazlitt wrote a series of essays on his living contemporaries, among them the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the novelist William Godwin and the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The opening contents shown here do not list an essay on Edmund Burke, who died in 1797. The curator's note says Burke is included, so the full text should be checked. Because the copy was extra-illustrated by a later owner, it shows how readers of the 1820s collected portraits of writers and statesmen.

Look closer

• Which contemporaries does Hazlitt choose, and what does the contents list suggest about his idea of an important public figure?
• What do the added portraits and letters tell you about the compiler's interests, and what might a single later owner have chosen to leave out?
• Is Burke's place in this book clear from the contents, and how would you check it?