{\b James Henry Leigh Hunt}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 19 October 1784

{\b Date of Death}.: 28 August 1859

{\b Works}.

English essayist, journalist and poet. His poem The Story of Rimini (1816) was 
influential on the second generation of Romantic poets, particularly Keats. 
Other well-known poems include Captain Sword and Captain Pen (1835) and the 
much-anthologised Abou Ben Adhem (1825) and Jenny Kissed Me (1825). An edition 
of Hunt's Poetical Works was published in 1838. Most of his prose appeared in 
the form of essays in his own journals. Imagination and Fancy (1844) is his 
most important longer work in prose, in which he compares the arts of painting 
and poetry.

 
{\b Featured Works}.

'Jenny Kissed Me', 'The Nile', 'Abou Ben Adhem', 'On a Lock of Milton's Hair', 
'Lilies', 'An Angel in the House', 'Hampstead', 'To the Grasshopper and the 
Cricket', 'Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard', 'The Fish, the Man and the 
Spirit', 'Poppies'.

{\b General Comment}.

Hunt's father was an American clergyman who came to settle in Southgate, 
Middlesex. Leigh attended Christ's Hospital school in London, and published 
his first book of poetry, Juvenilia, at the age of seventeen. The following 
year he set up the weekly Examiner, with his brother John. This was the first 
of a series of journals he edited, which included the Reflector, Indicator, 
Companion, Tatler and London Journal. The influence of literary magazines was 
very strong at this time, and Hunt was responsible for recognising and 
promoting emerging writers of the calibre of Keats, Shelley and Tennyson. 

The popularity of his journalism was not without its drawbacks, however; in 
1813 he and his brother were imprisoned for their attacks on the Prince 
Regent. The two years he spent in jail gained Hunt the reputation of a Liberal 
martyr, but it also damaged his health. On his release he rejoined a thriving 
literary society which included Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt and Thomas De 
Quincey, as well as several great Romantic poets; Shelley was introduced to 
Keats at Hunt's house.

In 1822 Hunt took his family to Italy, where he planned to start a new 
journal, The Liberal, in collaboration with Shelley and Byron. Unfortunately 
the venture was cut short when Shelley was drowned, and Hunt was left in 
serious financial trouble when Byron departed for Greece in 1824. He returned 
to England the following year, where he pursued his literary and journalistic 
career into his late sixties.

Hunt was a key figure in the development of English literature during the 
Romantic period, both as a writer and an editor. In poetry he turned to the 
Italians for what he called 'a freer spirit of versification' and the 
influence of the Elizabethans on his work was also significant. In addition to 
his own work, he was immortalised by Charles Dickens, in the character of 
Skimpole in Bleak House.