BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The Round Table was published in two 12mo volumes in 1817. The title-page runs as follows: ‘The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners, By William Hazlitt. Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co. And Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London, 1817.’ Twelve of the fifty-two numbers were by Leigh Hunt, as the Advertisement explains. The essays consisted for the most part, but not entirely, of papers contributed to The Examiner under the title of ‘The Round Table’ between January 1, 1815, and January 5, 1817. Hazlitt, however, included several essays taken from other columns of The Examiner and from The Morning Chronicle and other sources, and did not include the whole of his contributions to the Round Table series. A ‘third’ edition, edited by the author’s son, was published in one 12mo volume in 1841. In this edition many essays were omitted which had appeared, or were intended to appear, in the series of Hazlitt’s works then being published by Templeman; three essays contributed by Hazlitt to The Liberal in 1822 were added; and Leigh Hunt’s essays were retained. Hazlitt’s essays as published in the two volumes of 1817 were restored, and Leigh Hunt’s essays were for the first time omitted in a later edition (8vo, 1871) edited by the author’s grandson, Mr. W. C. Hazlitt. The present edition is an exact reproduction of Hazlitt’s essays from the edition of 1817, except that a few obvious printer’s errors have been corrected. Of the contributions made by Hazlitt to the Round Table series in The Examiner and not included in the two volumes of 1817 some were used by him in other publications, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817) and Political Essays (1819), some were published in the posthumous Winterslow (1850), and some have not been hitherto republished. The source of each of the following essays is indicated in the Notes. Gifford’s review of The Round Table in The Quarterly Review for April 1817 is dealt with by the author in A Letter to William Gifford, Esq., which is included in this volume.