Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) was a prolific, versatile and engaging writer. He outlived many of the poets and essayists of his generation whose reputations overshadowed his, but Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats all owed a debt to his advocacy, as did Tennyson and Browning. A poet of charm and technical skill, and an able translator and playwright, Leigh Hunt excelled as an essayist, literary critic and letter writer. His concern was always, in the words of his son, to 'open more widely the door of the library', to share his literary enthusiasms and extend his readers' tastes. This anthology draws on the range of Hunt's poetry and prose, revealing a writer committed to the humane and civilising powers of literature and friendship.

Table of Contents

Biographical Introduction

Selected Bibliography



POETRY

From the Preface to The Story of Rimini

From The Story of Rimini

To Hampstead

Description of Hampstead

To the Grasshoppers and the Cricket

On a Lock of Milton's Hair

The Nile

To T.L.H

To a Lady who wished to see him

(from the French of Clement Marot)

Song (from the French of Clement Marot)

From Captain Sword and Captain Pen

From the Autobiography

The Fish, The Man, and the Spirit

About Ben Adhem

Rondeau

From A Rustic Walk and Dinner

To Charles Dickens

On the Death of His Son Vincent



PROSE

From 'What is Poetry'

From the Preface to Stories in Verse

From the Autobiography : Coleridge

From Table Talk : Charles Lamb

From Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries:

Lord Byron

Mr Shelley

Mr Keats

From The Examiner: Adonais

From a review of Tennyson's Poems (1842)

From The Examiner:

Rules for the Conduct of Newspaper Editors

Distressed Seamen

Cause of the Inferiority of Parliament

I and We

From The Indicator

A Now: descriptive of a hot day

A Now: descriptive of a cold day



LETTERS

To Marianne Kent

To Marianne Hunt

To Mr Ives, head jailer

From the Autobiography

To John Keats

To P.B. Shelley

To Joseph Severn

To P.B. Shelley

To Horace Smith

From T.B. Macaulay

From Leigh Hunt's Journal

To Thomas Moore

To B.W. Proctor

To B.W. Proctor

To Mr and Mrs Browning



LEIGH HUNT AS SEEN BY CONTEMPORARIES

William Hazlitt

Thomas Carlyle

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Charles Dickens: from Bleak House

John Forster

Charles Dickens

Notes