HUNT, JAMES HENRY LEIGH English essayist and poet, was born at Southgate, Middlesex. His father had been a lawyer in Philadelphia, and had left the United States because of his loyalist sympathies. The son, who was educated at Christ's Hospital, began writing verse as soon as he left school, and soon became a constant contributor to the newspapers. In 1808 he became editor of the Examiner, a clever journal owned by his brother John. The brothers were sent to prison for an attack in the Examiner on the prince regent. The offensive phrase was "a fat Adonis of 5o." Leigh Hunt's imprisonment had com pensations, for it brought Byron, Moore, Brougham and other friends of liberty to see him in prison. Another joint enterprise of the Hunt brothers was a quarterly, the Reflector. The essays published as The Round Table (2 vols., 1816-17), conjointly with William Hazlitt, appeared in the Examiner.
In 1816 Leigh Hunt wrote his Story of Rimini, which estab lished his fame as a poet. Though few read it now, the poem is important in the history of English poetry, because in it Hunt went back to the rhythms of Chaucer and Spenser and thus be came one of the pioneers of the new romantic school. In 1818 appeared a collection of poems entitled Foliage, followed in by Hero and Leander, and Bacchus and Ariadne. In the same year he reprinted these two works with The Story of Rimini and The Descent of Liberty with the title of Poetical Works, and started the Indicator, in which some of his best work appeared. Both Keats and Shelley belonged to the circle gathered around him at Hampstead, which also included William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Bryan Procter, Benjamin Haydon, Cowden Clarke, C. W. Dilke, Walter Coulson, John Hamilton Reynolds and other men of liberal sympathies. After Shelley's departure for Italy Leigh Hunt's financial situation became desperate. Marianne Hunt (nee Kent), his rather unattractive wife, wrote to Mrs. Shelley, with the result that Leigh Hunt was invited to go out to meet Shelley and Byron at Pisa. Byron provided the Hunts and their family (there were seven children) with a lodging in the Villa Lanfranchi, and Leigh Hunt was to publish a liberal paper. But Byron was annoyed when he learned that Leigh Hunt had no longer a share in the Examiner, and the connection proved an unhappy one. Nevertheless, though Byron was not always gra cious, he made substantial payments to Hunt, and before he left for Greece made over to John Hunt exceedingly valuable copy rights. The ill-starred Liberal existed through four quarterly numbers. The Hunts remained in Italy until 1825. After his return to England Hunt revenged himself for the slights he had received from Byron in the ill-judged Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries (1828), which brought down on him the scorn of Moore.
From that time onwards Leigh Hunt's life was a constant struggle with sickness and poverty. He edited various papers, and published many admirable volumes of criticism, but was often dependent on Mrs. Shelley's kindness until in 1847 he received a Civil List pension. Hunt was a generous critic, and had a fresh open mind which recognized genius before it was acknowledged elsewhere. He had been one of the first to recognize a great poet in Keats, and he lived to welcome the early poems of Tennyson. He died at Putney on Aug. 28, 1859. His most important later works were two excellent selections (1844 and 1846) from the English poets, A Book for a Corner (2 vols., 1849),Auto biography (3 vols., 185o), Table Talk (1851). His narrative poems, original and translated, many of the shorter of which are minor classics, were collected as Stories in Verse (1855). Leigh Hunt excelled especially in narrative poetry, of which "Abou ben Adhem" and "Solomon's Ring" are excellent examples on a small scale.
Leigh Hunt's other works include: Amyntas, A Tale of the Woods (1820), translated from Tasso ; The Seer, or Common-Places refreshed (2 pts., 1840-41) ; three of the Canterbury Tales in The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, modernized (1841) ; Stories from the Italian Poets (1846) ; Men, Women and Books (2 vols., 1847) ; The Old Court Suburb (2 vols., 1855; ed. A. Dobson, 1902) ; selections from Beau mont and Fletcher (1855) ; and, with S. Adams Lee, The Book of the Sonnet (Boston, 1867). His Poetical Works (2 vols.), revised by him self and edited by Lee, were printed at Boston, U.S.A., in 1857, and an edition (London and New York) by his son, Thornton Hunt, appeared in 186o. Among volumes of selections are: Essays (1887) , ed. A. Symons; Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist (1889) , ed. C. Kent; Essays and Poems (1891), ed. R. B. Johnson for the "Temple Li brary"; Prefaces by Leigh Hunt, Mainly to his Periodicals, ed. R. Brimley Johnson (1928) .
His Autobiography was revised by himself shortly before his death, and edited (1859) by his son Thornton Hunt, who also arranged his Correspondence (2 vols., 1862). Additional letters were printed by the Cowden Clarkes in their Recollections of Writers (1878). The Auto biography was edited (2 vols., 1903) with full bibliographical note by R. Ingpen. A bibliography of his works was compiled by Alexander Ireland (List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, 1868) . There are short lives of Hunt by Cosmo Monkhouse ("Great Writers," 1893) and by R. B. Johnson (1896).