Leigh Hunt was known primarily in his own time as a poet, but today he is recognized more for his contributions in prose. He wrote critical articles on plays, operas, and literature; reviews of books; newspaper editorials; essays; a novel; and an autobiography. In the early nineteenth century only William Hazlitt surpassed Hunt as a critic, but no one has surpassed him in the discovery of new literary talent. Here he was all but infallible in the early recognition of great English writers from John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley to Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. As editor of the weekly Examiner from 1808 until 1821, Hunt exerted considerable influence on journalism, particularly with his liberal political editorials. But Hunt's greatest contribution to prose was to the personal essay. Of his contemporaries, probably only Charles Lamb wrote better essays, and Hunt's influence on the development of the form has...