Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Hazlitt, William Carew
HAZLITT, WILLIAM CAREW (1834–1913), bibliographer and man of letters, was born in London 22 August 1834. He was the eldest son of William Hazlitt, registrar of the court of bankruptcy, by his wife, Catherine Reynell, and a grandson of William Hazlitt [q.v.], the essayist. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School from 1842 to 1850, and after experimenting in journalism, in civil engineering, and, during the Crimean War, as a supernumerary clerk at the War Office, he published in 1858 The History of the Origin and Rise of the Republic of Venice, which in revised and extended forms reappeared in 1860 as a History of the Venetian Republic, and in 1900 and 1915 as The Venetian Republic, its Rise, its Growth, its Fall.
After eating dinners at the Inner Temple Hazlitt was called to the bar in 1861, but he was now becoming interested in the old books which he recorded in a Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain from the Invention of Printing to the Restoration (1867). To listing and editing these he devoted much of the rest of his life, examining thousands of old books as they passed through the sale rooms. Three series of Bibliographical Collections and Notes, with two supplements to the third, were published by him during the years 1876 to 1889, followed by a General Index, compiled by G. J. Gray (1893), and a fourth series in 1903. Written on odd bits of paper in a difficult hand, his notes, when they appeared in print, were sometimes inexact, but the Collections and Notes is still a much-used book of reference. In his old age Hazlitt gave much time to bringing all his notes together, with many new ones, as a Consolidated Bibliography, and made the cost of printing this a first charge on a reversionary bequest to the British Museum, the balance of which was to form a fund for purchasing early English books. The preparation of his Handbook enabled Hazlitt to give much valuable help to Henry Huth [q.v.] in the formation of the latter's well-known library, and he frequently offered bargains from the sale rooms to the British Museum and elsewhere. His methods of work and experiences are revealed in his Confessions of a Collector (1897) and in his two volumes, The Hazlitts (1911) and The Later Hazlitts (1912).Hazlitt's chief editorial undertakings were new editions of Robert Dodsley's Select Collection of Old Plays in fifteen volumes (1874–1876) and of Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry (1871); Shakespeare's Library in six volumes (1875), Old English Jest Books in three volumes (1863–1864), and the Poems and Plays of Thomas Randolph (1875). He also wrote Shakespeare, the Man and his Work (1902), Coinage of the European Continent (1893–1897), two volumes of poems (1877, 1897), and Man considered in relation to God and a Church (1905, 5th edition 1912). The record of Hazlitt's publications extends to over sixty items and is good evidence of a busy life. He died at Richmond, Surrey, 8 September 1913.
Hazlitt married in 1863 Henrietta, daughter of John Foulkes, of Ashfield House, Denbighshire, and had one son and one daughter.
[W. C. Hazlitt, Four Generations of a Literary Family, 1897; The Hazlitts; The Later Hazlitts; Confessions of a Collector; private information.]