ABSTRACT
Richard Hengist Horne (1803–1884) published A New Spirit of the Age as an update of Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age (1825), which had profiled two dozen leading figures of the day. Because ‘a new set of men, several of them animated by a new spirit, have obtained eminent positions in the public mind,’ 15 Horne’s selection (with the exception of Leigh Hunt and Wordsworth) was made from those not ‘already “crowned”’. Hazlitt’s essays were exclusively about men. For Horne, the new spirit meant recognising prominent women authors as well; ten women are represented in his twenty-five essays. The inclusion of Mary Shelley in the volume indicates Horne’s respect for her place among that prestigious company.
