8vo. [6], 192pp. With an engraved title page. Finely bound in contemporary gilt-tooled calf, contrasting black morocco lettering-piece. Slightly marked, joints cracked, small worm-track to lower joint. Armorial bookplate of Edward Nicholas Hurt and book-label of Bent Juel-Jensen to FEP. Browning to endpapers, spotting to title and advertisement leaf.

An attractively bound first edition of great English essayist William Hazlitt's (1778-1830) frustrated, controversial Liber Amoris, the tumultuous autobiographical account of his disastrous, obsessive relationship with a young girl named Sarah Walker. Its scandalous publication prompted near-universal disgust: 'It ought to exclude the author from all decent society', wrote Robinson, who would've been satisfied with Hazlitt's subsequent self-imposed exile to Winterslow, fielding criticism from friends and enemies alike.