1923 A Reply to Z

Description

First Edition, Limited Edition, Original Binding, Publishers' Original Binding, With Dustwrapper

In the publisher's original quarter red cloth binding with dark cloth boards.

This volume is a first limited edition of this work, being copy number two hundred and twenty one of three hundred copies printed in Baskerville type on hand-made paper.

This edition contains William Hazlitt’s previously unpublished reply to an anonymous letter titled “Hazlitt Cross-Questioned,” which appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine in August 1818. The letter, signed “An Old Friend with a New Face,” is widely attributed to the critic John Wilson, though this remains unproven.

The reply makes for a scathing and fascinating read. Hazlitt declares: “If I were in the habit of using the words, Liar, Coxcomb, Hypocrite, Scoundrel, Black-guards, etc. I should apply them to you, but this would be degrading them still lower unnecessarily, for it is quite as easy to prove you the things as you call the names.”