Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt (1774-1843) was, in many ways, a woman ahead of her time. A relatively little known figure of the British Romantic era, Stoddart’s extraordinary walking tours and the journal in which she recorded them can be of great value for understanding and analyzing nineteenth-century women’s writing, travel, and lifestyle. 

Stoddart is most known for her relationships: with her brother, the editor and lawyer Sir John Stoddart, with other literary figures like Mary and Charles Lamb, and primarily with her husband, the essayist William Hazlitt. However, Stoddart was a remarkable character in her own right. Her grandson, William Carew Hazlitt, recalled that she “was capitally read, talked well, and was one of the best letter-writters of her time. She was a true wife to William Hazlitt, and a fond mother to the only child she was able to rear” (Memoirs 12). In a letter written early in their relationship, Stoddart’s close friend Mary Lamb wrote “I will protest you are the most amusing, good-humoured, good sister, and altogether excellent girl I know, or any other fibs you will please to dictate to me,” showing both her earnest nature as well as the lack of feminine delicacy for which she was often criticized (Hitchcock 115). 

First hand accounts of Stoddart often focus on her unconventionality and frankness, certainly perceived as uncommon characteristics for women of her time. There are anecdotes about her drinking grog with her father as a child and having brandy with Mary Lamb while they lounged with their feet up on the fireplace fender. She was the complete opposite of her prim and proper brother, who described her as “deficient in those minutiae of taste and conduct which constitute elegance of manners and mental refinement” (Jones 11). Yet W.C. Hazlitt notes that it was this direct manner and "unaffected good sense" (Memoirs 167) that first drew Hazlitt to her. 

Before marrying William Hazlitt in 1808 (and possibly after), she had several suitors in England and Malta, where she moved with her brother in order to look for a husband. Willard Hallam Bonner notes that she had as many as seven suitors before Hazlitt, a few of which she might have been engaged to. Catherine Macdonald Maclean also suggests that Stoddart was involved in “a disagreeable scrape of some kind” toward the end of her stay in Malta, which in part might have explained a quick succession of “matrimonial overtures” the following year and her rushed courtship with Hazlitt (239-40). Some also speculate that Stoddart might have gotten pregnant somewhat before the wedding, as suggested by special marriage license Hazlitt procured to marry her early. ​​

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Stoddart was a lover of art and literature, and most of her first travels upon reaching Scotland in 1822 are to galleries and the library. Her grandson wrote that “A lady once told me that when she lived at Kentish Town, Mrs. Hazlitt would come to see her, with a sort of satchel round her waist, and beg the loan of a few books to read. I have heard of my grandmother borrowing of others in the same way. She found books a great resource in her rather monotonous life, especially when rheumatism had somewhat affected the use of her fingers in sewing and knitting” (Four Generations 178-9). Carew Hazlitt also recalled that she was known to memorize and recite long quotations from contemporary poets like Wordsworth, Byron, and Scott. Similarly, her writings convey a profound understanding of architecture and art, and she possessed knowledge of technical terminology as well as cultivated opinions on aesthetics. Though her husband is remembered as a genius, Stoddart too showed a great intellect, and often attended the same lectures as her husband with Hazlitt and other great minds like William Godwin. She spoke French with John and was commissioned by Hazlitt to procure art for his study while in London. Additionally, Stoddart contributed to Hazlitt's work by being the one "who checked his references and looked out the quotations he wished to insert in the blanks he left in his manuscripts" (Jones 11). 

Stoddart was also very fond of walking—Leslie Stephen observed that the rain would seldom stop her walks, and when friends were visiting she would walk with them as much as twenty miles a day in the Salisbury Plains. Her love of walking is made abundantly clear in the journal she recorded during the aforementioned trip which was later published as Journal of my Trip to Scotland.