Hazlitt Society newsletter

June 2011

Dear members of the Hazlitt Society

Annual Lecture

The Hazlitt Society is delighted to announce that the seventh annual lecture will be given by
TARIQ ALI at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 at 2pm on Saturday 17 September 2011.

This year’s lecture has a broader interest than Hazlitt, although it is in the area of political radicalism. Tariq Ali’s lecture is entitled

Is Capitalism a Threat to Democracy

and will be prefaced by Hazlitt scholar Paul Hamilton, Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London, who will speak first for 20 minutes on Hazlitt's political essays. This will be followed by 40 minutes from Tariq Ali, followed in turn by a question and answer session.

Professor Hamilton’s research is primarily on Enlightenment and Romantic thought and literature, and he is particularly interested in the relations between literature, philosophy and political theory. He is on the board of the Hazlitt Review, and has written and published extensively on Hazlitt.

Tariq Ali has been a leading figure of the international left since the 1960s. He has been writing for the Guardian since the 1970s. He is a long-standing editor of the New Left Review and a political commentator published on every continent.

After the lecture, the Committee would like to invite all members who attend to join us for tea or coffee in the foyer of Conway Hall. Refreshments beforehand will be available for purchase either in the foyer from 12.30 or very close by in the pleasant open air café in Red Lion Square.

If you would like to attend, please complete the attached form and return it to Helen Hodgson at the Guardian. We will not be issuing tickets, but we do need to have an idea of the numbers involved.

As in previous years, the lecture is free of charge, so please bring guests. There is, however, an optional subscription of £10 (£5 for those under 25) for the year September 2011 to September 2012, which includes a copy of the Hazlitt Review, Volume 4, that will be launched at the lecture.

Hazlitt Day-School

It is with enormous regret that we have to report the suspension of the Hazlitt Day-School founded in Oxford in 2001 by Uttara Natarajan, Tom Paulin and Duncan Wu. Since the retirement of Tom Paulin and the departure of Duncan Wu from the University, the Day School lost its Oxford base, and has been unable as yet to find another home. There is some discussion of the possibility of holding it in London, but nothing has so far materialized. We will alert members if and when the situation changes. In the meantime, we welcome any suggestions for alternative venues and prospective hosts, and will do everything we can to assist anyone who might wish to take charge.

The Hazlitt Review

The Hazlitt Society is pleased to announce the publication of the 2011 issue of The Hazlitt Review, to be launched at the Society’s annual lecture on 17 September 2011. Subscribers to the Society will be entitled to a copy of the Review (£5 to non-subscribers). An annual peer-reviewed journal, The Hazlitt Review seeks to promote and maintain Hazlitt’s standing, both in the academy and to a wider readership, by providing a forum for new writing on Hazlitt, by established scholars as well as more recent entrants in the field.

The fourth issue will carry extracts from Tony Benn’s informal discussion of Hazlitt’s relevance to the present day at the Hazlitt Society’s annual lecture in 2010. Other contributions are as follows: Paul Hamilton (Queen Mary, University of London) on Hazlitt’s Political Essays of 1819; Eleanor Relle (Maidstone Museum) on the biographical and creative significance to Hazlitt of various items in the Hazlitt collection held by the Maidstone Museum; Jon Cook (University of East Anglia) on Hazlitt’s distinctive take on the passions and their influence on human experience and behaviour. The 2011 issue will also carry a review by Robert White of Lamb, Hazlitt, Keats: Great Shakespeareans, Volume IV, edited by Adrian Poole (Continuum, 2010).

The Editorial Board of the Review welcomes submissions on any topic directly relating to Hazlitt. Scholarly essays (4000-7000 words) and reviews should follow the MHRA style. The Board is also happy to consider more informal submissions from Hazlitt’s lay readership. Email Uttara Natajaran or post to Uttara Natarajan, Department of English & Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London SE14 6NW. We regret that we cannot publish material already published or submitted elsewhere

We look forward to seeing you at this year’s lecture on 17 September.

With warmest good wishes from the Committee

Helen Hodgson
Secretary & Correspondent