Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt

Leigh Hunt is the forgotten giant of English Romanticism. The man Virginia Woolf called the “spiritual grandfather” of the modern world was descended from black Caribbeans and grew up a child of the American and French Revolutions. A poet and radical journalist, he threw off the shackles of the old order and campaigned tirelessly for Irish freedom and the abolition of slavery. Unwilling to view the Prince of Wales as an “Adonis in Loveliness,” Hunt was jailed for a “diabolical libel” that presented the prince as he was: a corpulent 50-year-old, sodden with drink and drugs. In prison, Hunt drew the homage of Lord Byron, and discovered the Romantic geniuses Keats and Shelley. Hunt’s own poetry glows with the sexual frankness that characterized all his relationships. Written with flair and brilliant imaginative insight, Fiery Heart is a sparkling portrait of Leigh Hunt and the English Romantics.