BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Published anonymously in one volume (8vo, 424 pages) in 1825, with the following title-page:—‘The Spirit of the Age: or Contemporary Portraits. “To know another well were to know one’s self.” London: Printed for Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street. 1825.’ The imprint was ‘London: Printed by S. and R. Bentley, Dorset Street.’ A second edition (here reproduced), with the same title-page (except that the quotation ran: ‘“To know a man well, were to know himself.” Hamlet’) and imprint, was produced in smaller type (8vo, 408 pages) in the same year. In this edition the essays were arranged in a different order, an addition was made to the essay on Coleridge, and an essay on Cobbett from Table Talk (vol. i., 1821) was included. In the same year, 1825, an edition was published in Paris (A. and W. Galignani) which included the essay on Cobbett and an essay on Canning. The third edition, edited by the author’s son, was published in 1858 (one volume, 8vo, 396 pages, C. Templeman, Great Portland Street). In this edition the essays on Cobbett and Canning were included, and the essays were arranged in an order different from that of either the first or the second edition. The fourth edition, edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt for Bohn’s Standard Library (1886) restored the order of the second edition, but included the essay on Canning. In this edition Mr. Hazlitt made some alterations in the text based upon (1) portions of the original MSS. then in his possession, and (2) autograph notes of the author’s in a copy of the second edition belonging to Mr. C. W. Reynell. A volume of Essays selected from The Spirit of the Age, with an introduction by R. B. Johnson, was published in 1893 (the Knickerbocker Press, G. P. Putnam’s Sons). Five of the essays, viz.: those on Bentham, Irving, Horne Tooke, Scott, and Eldon were originally published in Colburn’s New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (1824, vols. x. and xi.) in a series entitled ‘The Spirits of the Age.’