Author. He was a prolific poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator of early 19th-century England. who was known as "Leigh Hunt." In 1808, he was the co-founder with his brother of "The Examiner," a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. In a wide social circle, he introduced and supported English literary greats of the Romantic movement, such as Charles Dickens, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, Lord Alfred Tennyson, and others by publishing their writings. He was born to parents who had settled in the American colony of Pennsylvania but returned to England as staunch Tories during the American Revolutionary War. Upon coming to England, his father became a poor vicar and then a tutor, who was sent to debtor's prison more than once. For eight years, he received a private education at Christ's Hospital. In 1801, he published his first collection of poems. "Juvenilia," and in 1818, he published his second collection, "Foliage." In 1819, "The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt" was published. He loved Italian poetry, and this was seen in his works. Most of his poems were published before 1820. In 1805, he and his brother started the newspaper "The News." He was writing for newspapers as a literary critic, which was published in a volume, "Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres," in 1807. After leaving law studies, he held a position as a clerk at the War Office until 1808. In 1809, he married Margaret Kent, and the couple had ten children before her death. Throughout his career, he translated into English a vast amount of poetry from Greek, Roman, Italian, and French. He was the author of a novel and several plays. In 1811, he began editing the first of his many journals, "The Reflector," a political magazine that includes essays and poetry. Other journals include "The Literary Pocket Book," which began in 1818, and "The Indicator" from 1819 to 1821. He published his poems in his journals and made political enemies after writing about the abolition of the slave trade, Catholic emancipation, and reform of Parliament and the criminal law. With no freedom of the press, in the March 22, 1812 edition of the "Examiner," he published in an editorial and as a part of an ongoing attack on the Prince Regent, George IV, calling him as a fat "Adonis" of 50. He and his brother John were found guilty of slander and were imprisoned in Surrey Gaol from February 3, 1813, to February 2, 1815, and ordered to pay a heavy fine. He continued to write from prison as "a martyr in the cause of liberty." In the fall of 1821, Shelley and Byron persuaded Hunt to come to Italy to edit a journal, which Shelley was going to finance. Bad weather kept him from arriving on time, yet he and his family of seven did arrive on July 1, 1822. Within days, Shelley drowned while his boat was caught in rough waters of a sudden squall, and this death impacted him greatly emotionally as well as financially. The painting "The Funeral of Shelley" by Louis Éduard Fournier shows him on the beach watching Shelley's cremation. Many poets and authors attempted to allay the financial burden, in the meantime, Byron withdrew his promise of financing an already launched journal. While in Italy, he translated works. To add to the distress, Byron was killed fighting the Turks in 1824. On October 14, 1825, he and his family returned from Italy to England. He published "Bacchus in Tuscany" in 1825 and "Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries" in 1828, which painted Byron in a negative light. The decade of the 1830s found him in poverty and poor health, along with writing constantly while fighting the increase in postage. Along with his collections of journals, he published in 1935 the anti-war poem "Captain Sword and Captain Pen." During this time, he published two well-accepted poems, "Abou Ben Adhem" in 1834 and "Jenny Kissed Me," a whimsical piece in 1838. The 1840s were very productive with many publications, including his nine-hundred-line poem, "The Palfrey: A Love Story of Old Times," in 1842. Financially, his life's circumstances improved as after the 1844 death of Shelley's father, he received an annual income from Shelley's estate as well as a Civil List Pension in 1847. In 1850, he published his "Autobiography," which critics believe is his best work. Parts of this piece were based on the 1832 "Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries," except the later piece was not as hard on his friend as the earlier one. He edited the last of at least eight journals, the weekly "Leigh Hunt's Journal," from December 1850 to March 1851. The decade of the 1850s was full of hardships: In 1852, his youngest son, Vicent, died of tuberculosis; his friend Charles Dickens satirized him as Simpole in the novel "Bleak House" in 1853; and his wife died in 1857 with him following two years later, dying suddenly while visiting a friend's house. There are at least six Blue historical plaques in London dedicated to him.