Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt

Reviews:
"This new, magisterial edition of The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt reveals him to be a shrewder, more eloquent and more conscientiously consistent advocate for social and aesthetic reform than critics have previously appreciated. From the nearly 2,500 pages that comprise this, the most comprehensive scholarly edition of his wide-ranging prose and poetical writings ever undertaken, Hunt emerges as one of the most extraordinary and tragically unacknowledged legislators of his day…. This magnificent edition, overall edited by Michael Eberle-Sinatra and Robert Morrison, promises not only to rehabilitate a forgotten cultural icon, but to reconfigure the priorities of Romantic and Victorian historians and literary critics… the six volumes are otherwise well prepared; invaluable biographical directories have been compiled for each, and the accompanying annotation is consistently crisp and telling, assimilating the most recent revaluations. The individual introductions by the respective volume editors constitute a major contribution to nineteenth-century studies and, taken together, provide the best preface to the writings and thought of Leigh Hunt that has ever been written." (Kelly Grovier, Times Literary Supplement)

"Recognising the importance of Hunt's early political journalism, the Pickering and Chatto editors have devoted nearly two volumes of the new Selected Writings to the work he did during the Examiner period. And the editors of these volumes, Greg Kuchich and Jeffrey Cox, have done a superb job of setting it in context, offering a compelling re-evaluative essay by way of an introduction, and prefacing every article with a detailed explanatory note.” (Gregory Dart, London Review of Books)

"The new six-volume edition of Hunt's Selected Writings published by Pickering and Chatto is the first accurately to represent the scale and richness of his output. …. The editorial labour of retrieving Hunt's writings from scarce periodicals and rare editions has been immense and overwhelmingly worthwhile. Thanks to the editors of The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt, it is now possible to begin a thoroughgoing reassessment of Hunt's achievement and his decisive impact on Romantic and Victorian culture." (Nicholas Roe, BARS Bulletin & Review)

"None of these studies of Romantic prose [mentioned earlier in the review] includes Leigh Hunt, perhaps in part because so little of his prose has been collected in one accessible form. Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt, edited in six substantial volumes by Michael Eberle-Sinatra and Robert Morrison, does much to remedy this situation. The ‘vast output’ over a sixty-year career that made Hunt ‘one of the leading writers of his age’ (p. 2) has surely also deterred would-be editors. Eberle-Sinatra and Morrison have addressed this problem by assembling a distinguished team of volume editors and providing headnotes, generous explanatory endnotes, a substantial ‘Biographical Directory,’ and a fairly substantial index that be invaluable to scholars wishing to canvass the essays as a whole.” (Noah Heringman, Studies in English Language)

"The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt fills the need for a thoroughly annotated, contemporary selected edition.  Anyone who has spent time with Hunt’s vast and various output will immediately recognize the challenges faced by his prospective editor. Hunt’s writings are widely scattered throughout a range of books and periodicals, and our most recent editions consist of three volumes published between 1949 and 1962.  The present edition is far more expansive, and it not only adds two much-needed volumes of Hunt’s poetry but is careful to insist upon and illustrate the ‘cross-fertilization’ between his numerous personae and activities. ... By making available the writings of this preeminently sociable and liberal writer, the editors have produced a work that should sharpen our collective visions of cultural critique in the Romantic period, as well as our collective practices of cultural critique in our own.  More than an expansive, meticulous, and useful scholarly edition, The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt represents a collaborative act of professional empathy, political commitment, and imaginative engagement." (Daniel E. White, University of Toronto Quarterly)

"Although one might have wished for a “Complete” rather than “Selected” Writings of Leigh Hunt, such an enterprise would have delayed this project for years and been possible only through an electronic edition; nevertheless, the reader is here presented with enough information in the Introductions and enough reprinted essays and poems to understand Hunt creating and being created by the political and poetical age in which he found himself. ... In these concluding two volumes, as well as in the entire 6-volume set, a great deal can be learned about Leigh Hunt and about his role in the period of English Romanticism." (Charles Robinson, Keats-Shelley Journal)