Writing the “Love Letter” from the Lack: The Economy of Absence in Hazlitt’s Liber Amoris

My state is this, that I shall never lie down again at night nor rise up in the morning in peace, nor ever behold my little boy’s face with pleasure while I live — unless I am restored to her favour. (Hazlitt 78, 142)William Hazlitt’s intensely ambivalent Liber Amoris functions on a number of different narrative levels. These narrative levels, however, seemingly lie outside much expressible literary value for many Hazlitt critics, both contemporaneous with Hazlitt and more contemporary with c...