Liber Amoris, Or, The New Pygmalion

A middle-aged writer lodging in Southampton Buildings falls in love with his landlord's daughter, who brings up his breakfast, sits on his knee, allows him to believe what he wants to believe, and is doing the same for at least one other lodger. The book gives the dialogues between them, then the letters he wrote to friends from Scotland while waiting out a divorce so that he could marry her, and finally the collapse — the discovery, the recriminations, and the last unanswered letters.

William Hazlitt published Liber Amoris anonymously in 1823, out of his own infatuation with Sarah Walker. His enemies identified him at once and used it against him for the rest of his life. It is one of the most exposed books in English, written by the finest essayist of his generation about the worst thing that ever happened to him.

This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text in its three parts.