William Hazlitt (1778-1830), that most engaging of English essayists, is provocatively and congenially at home in this new collection of his city essays that spark with urbane wit and gossip. Characters from his world come alive: Wordsworth and Beau Brummell, street jugglers and coffee house politicians, the ladies’ maid returning from Italy ‘as giddy as if she had been up in a balloon’ and the literary footmen who ‘wear green spectacles’ and ‘are seen reading books they do not understand at the Museum and public libraries’.Gregory Dart’s selection reminds us that Hazlitt is not only an important critic and polemicist, but also a reflective, wry, wise and humorous writer, a man who relished London life. Many of the essays included here are made available for the first time in paperback. A detailed introduction and notes set them in their context and clarify contemporary references.