The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt.

HUNT, Leigh.

Item Number: 141637

London: Edward Moxon, 1832.

First edition of the collected poetical works of Leigh Hunt. Octavo, bound in full crushed levant morocco, gilt titles and elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, elaborate gilt tooling to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and wide inner dentelles, top edge gilt. With the original spine wrapper tipped in. In near fine condition.

English critic, essayist and poet Leigh Hunt was the centre of the Hampstead-based group that included William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, known as the "Hunt circle". Hunt also introduced John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson to the public. Hunt's presence at Shelley's funeral on the beach near Viareggio was immortalised in the painting by Louis Édouard Fournier and he inspired aspects of the Harold Skimpole character in Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House.