My new research project, Leigh Hunt as Victorian Writer, 1830-1860, will investigate the second half of Leigh Hunt’s life and provide the first in-depth reevaluation of a selection of his writings published between the years 1830 (year of publication of The Tatler, the sixth periodical founded by Hunt since 1805) and 1860 (the year after Hunt’s death when the second edition of his Autobiography was published). Leigh Hunt is now considered one of the key figures of the Romantic period in England, with his work as editor, journalist, poet, and facilitator. Indeed, numerous articles,  collections of essays, biographies, and monographs published in the last fifteen years have made this case perfectly clear. Hunt's contribution to Romantic and Victorian literature was as extensive as it has proven to be durable, in matters as various as prosodic experimentation and the modernization of the magazine essay. Yet little work beyond some biographical notices has been done on the second half of his life, a period that was however as productive as the first one and during which he was once again intimate with many of the finest writers of the time. This project intends to redress this perception and reassert Hunt’s place in the Victorian era, as well as his continuing importance for a better understanding of the London literary scene during the first two decades of Queen Victoria’s reign.

The publication of not one but two biographies in the winter of 2005 clearly attests to the renewed interest in Hunt within the scholarly community as well as with the public at large. However, only one of the biographies, Anthony Holden’s The Wit in the Dungeon: The Remarkable Life of Leigh Hunt, engages with the Victorian part of Hunt’s life. The final sentence of the other recent biography by Nicholas Roe, who considers Hunt’s life up to the year 1828, reads thus: ‘With Hunt’s return from Italy, it is in many ways a second life that is beginning’ (Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt 356). Leigh Hunt as Victorian Writer, 1830-1860 intends to look at this second life and analyze Hunt’s continuing contributions to English letters and the reception of selected works written in a variety of genres between 1830 and 1860. These include his writing familiar and critical essays in various periodicals, some poetry, a novel, several plays and editions of plays, a religious treatise, and an autobiography.

Leigh Hunt as Victorian Writer, 1830-1860 will serve as a complement to my earlier monograph devoted to this author: Leigh Hunt and the London Literary Scene: A Reception History of his Major Works, 1805-1828 (published by Routledge in 2005). It will be a continuation of my ongoing interest in this author and the rich literary scene to be found in London in the first half of the nineteenth century, especially as portrayed through the contemporary reception in periodicals and newspapers of Hunt’s writings, his relationship with other writers, and his engagement with historical events.

The potential contributions of Leigh Hunt as Victorian Writer, 1830-1860 are two-fold. First, by considering in detail a series of writings Hunt wrote between the years 1830 and 1860, this book-project will make an important contribution to Hunt studies and to Victorian studies at large since Hunt was actively engaged in the London literary scene in those years, making him the perfect contextualizer for other writers of the time, as well as shedding new light on the various literary genres popular at the time now that the novel is considered the only form of significance during that period. The second contribution will materialize through the unveiling of a website devoted to Hunt’s life and works which will provide ready access to various historical sources (including reviews, literary notices, political events as described in contemporary newspapers) to a wide audience both academic and non-academic, along with the full texts of a selection of his writings. The site will also build on this historical foundation by compiling a comprehensive bibliography of critical writings on Hunt and the various figures with whom he became associated after 1830. Ultimately, the work for my next monograph Leigh Hunt as Victorian Writer, 1830-1860 will draw on, as well as benefit from, work on the website.

[This project was awarded a standard SSHRC research grant in the spring of 2007.]