146- ] English Literature

146-] English Literature

Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock (18 October 1785 – 23 January 1866) was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting: characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day.

Background and education

Peacock was born in Weymouth , Dorset England, in 1785 to Samuel Peacock , a glass merchant, partner of a Mr Pellatt, presumed to be Apsley Pellatt (1763–1826) , and Sarah Love, daughter of Thomas Love, then a retired master in the Royal Navy. When Peacock was three years old, he and his mother moved to the home of his maternal grandparents . (Several biographical accounts name the death of Peacock’s father as the probable cause of this removal, but some uncertainty regarding the death of Samuel Peacock remains.)

When Peacock went with his mother to live with her family at Chertsey in 1791 , in 1792 he went to a school run by Joseph Harris Wicks at Englefield Green where he stayed for six and a half years.

Peacock's father died in 1794 in "poor circumstances" leaving a small annuity. Peacock's first known poem was an epitaph for a school fellow written at the age of ten and another on his Midsummer Holidays was written when he was thirteen. Around that time in 1798 he was abruptly taken from school and from then on was entirely self-educated.

Early occupation and travelling

In February 1800, Peacock became a clerk with Ludlow Fraser Company, who were merchants in the City of London. He lived with his mother on the firm's premises at 4 Angel Court Throgmorton Street. He won the eleventh prize from the Monthly Preceptor for a verse answer to the question "Is History or Biography the More Improving Study?" . He also contributed to "The Juvenile Library", a magazine for youth whose competitions excited the emulation of several other boys including Leigh Hunt, de Quincey, and W. J. Fox. He began visiting the Reading Room of the British Museum and continued doing so for many years, diligently studying the best literature in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian. In 1804 and 1806 he published two volumes of poetry, The Monks of St. Mark and Palmyra. Some of Peacock's juvenile compositions were privately printed by Sir Henry Cole.

In around 1806 Peacock left his job in the city and during the year made a solitary walking tour of Scotland. The annuity left by his father expired in October 1806. In 1807 he returned to live at his mother's house at Chertsey. He was briefly engaged to Fanny Faulkner, but it was broken off through the interference of her relations. His friends, as he hints, thought it wrong that so clever a man should be earning so little money. In the autumn of 1808 he became private secretary to Sir Home Popham, commanding the fleet before Flushing. By the end of the year he was serving Captain Andrew King aboard HMS Venerable in the Downs. His preconceived affection for the sea did not reconcile him to nautical realities. "Writing poetry," he says, "or doing anything else that is rational, in this floating inferno, is next to a moral impossibility. I would give the world to be at home and devote the winter to the composition of a comedy." He did write prologues and addresses for dramatic performances on board HMS Venerable. His dramatic taste then and for the next nine years resulted in attempts at comedies and lighter pieces, all of which lacked ease of dialogue and suffered from over-elaborated incident and humour. He left HMS Venerable in March 1809 at Deal and walked around Ramsgate in Kent before returning home to Chertsey. He had sent his publisher Edward Hookham a little poem of the River Thames which he expanded during the year into "The Genius of the Thames". On 29 May he set out on a two-week expedition to trace the course of the Thames from its source to Chertsey and spent two or three days staying in Oxford.

Peacock travelled to North Wales in January 1810 where he visited Tremadog and settled at Maentwrog in Merionethshire. At Maentwrog he was attracted to the parson's daughter Jane Gryffydh, whom he referred to as the "Caernavonshire nymph". Early in June 1810, the Genius of the Thames was published by Thomas and Edward Hookham. Early in 1811 he left Maentwrog to walk home via South Wales. He climbed Cadair Idris and visited Edward Scott at Bodtalog near Tywyn. He also visited William Madocks at Dolmelynllyn. His journey included Aberystwyth and Devil's Bridge, Ceredigion. Later in 1811, his mother's annuity expired and she had to leave Chertsey and moved to Morven Cottage Wraysbury near Staines with the help of some friends. In 1812 they had to leave Morven Cottage over problems paying tradesmen's bills.

Friendship with Shelley

In 1812 Peacock published another elaborate poem, The Philosophy of Melancholy, and in the same year made the acquaintance of Shelley. He wrote in his memoir of Shelley, that he "saw Shelley for the first time just before he went to Tanyrallt", whither Shelley proceeded from London in November 1812 (Hogg's Life of Shelley, vol. 2, pp. 174, 175.) Thomas Hookham, the publisher of all Peacock's early writings, was possibly responsible for the introduction. It was Hookham's circulating library which Shelley used for many years, and Hookham had sent The Genius of the Thames to Shelley, and in the Shelley Memorials, pp. 38–40, is a letter from the poet dated 18 August 1812, extolling the poetical merits of the performance and with equal exaggeration censuring what he thought the author's misguided patriotism. Peacock and Shelley became friends and Peacock influenced Shelley's fortunes both before and after his death.

In the winter of 1813 Peacock accompanied Shelley and his first wife Harriet to Edinburgh. Peacock was fond of Harriet, and in his old age defended her reputation from slanders spread by Jane, Lady Shelley, the daughter-in-law of Shelley's second wife Mary.

In 1814 Peacock published a satirical ballad, Sir Proteus, which appeared under the pseudonym "P. M. O'Donovan, Esq." Shelley resorted to him during the agitation of mind which preceded his separation from Harriet. After Shelley deserted Harriet, Peacock became an almost daily visitor throughout the winter of 1814–15 of Shelley and Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), at their London lodgings. In 1815 Peacock shared their voyage to the source of the Thames. "He seems", writes Charles Clairmont, Mary Godwin's stepbrother and a member of the party, "an idly-inclined man; indeed, he is professedly so in the summer; he owns he cannot apply himself to study, and thinks it more beneficial to him as a human being entirely to devote himself to the beauties of the season while they last; he was only happy while out from morning till night". By September 1815 when Shelley had taken up residence at Bishopsgate, near Windsor, Peacock had settled at Great Marlow. Peacock wrote Headlong Hall in 1815, and it was published the following year. With this work Peacock found the true field for his literary gift in the satiric novel, interspersed with delightful lyrics, amorous, narrative, or convivial .

During the winter of 1815–16 Peacock was regularly walking over to visit Shelley at Bishopgate. There he met Thomas Jefferson Hogg, and "the winter was a mere Atticism. Our studies were exclusively Greek". In 1816 Shelley went abroad, and Peacock appears to have been entrusted with the task of finding the Shelleys a new residence. He fixed them near his own home at Great Marlow. Peacock received a pension from Shelley for a time, and was put into requisition to keep off wholly unauthorised intruders upon Shelley's hospitable household. Peacock was consulted about alterations in Shelley's Laon and Cythna, and Peacock's enthusiasm for Greek poetry probably had some influence on Shelley's work. Shelley's influence upon Peacock may be traced in the latter's poem of Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell, published in 1818 and Shelley wrote a eulogistic review of it. Peacock also wrote at this time the satirical novels Melincourt published in 1817 and Nightmare Abbey published in 1818. Shelley made his final departure for Italy and the friends' agreement for mutual correspondence produced Shelley's magnificent descriptive letters from Italy, which otherwise might never have been written.

Peacock told Shelley that "he did not find this brilliant summer," of 1818, "very favourable to intellectual exertion;" but before it was quite over "rivers, castles, forests, abbeys, monks, maids, kings, and banditti were all dancing before me like a masked ball." He was at this time writing his romance of Maid Marian which he had completed except for the last three chapters.

East India Company

At the beginning of 1819, Peacock was unexpectedly summoned to London for a period of probation with the East India Company who needed to reinforce their staff with talented people. They summoned to their service in the Examiner's office James Mill and three others. Peacock was included at the recommendation of Peter Auber, the company historian, whom he had known at school, though probably not as a school-fellow. Peacock's test papers earned the high commendation, "Nothing superfluous and nothing wanting." On 13 January 1819, he wrote from 5 York Street, Covent Garden: "I now pass every morning at the India House, from half-past 10 to half-past 4, studying Indian affairs. My object is not yet attained, though I have little doubt but that it will be. It was not in the first instance of my own seeking, but was proposed to me. It will lead to a very sufficing provision for me in two or three years. It is not in the common routine of office, but is an employment of a very interesting and intellectual kind, connected with finance and legislation, in which it is possible to be of great service, not only to the Company, but to the millions under their dominion."

On 1 July 1819 Peacock slept for the first time in a house at 18 Stamford Street, Blackfriars which, "as you might expect from a Republican, he has furnished very handsomely." His mother continued to live with him in Stamford Street.

In 1820 Peacock contributed to Ollier's Literary Pocket Book and wrote The Four Ages of Poetry, the latter of which argued that poetry's relevance was being ended by science, a claim which provoked Shelley's Defence of Poetry. The official duties of the India House delayed the completion and publication of Maid Marian, begun in 1818, until 1822, and as a result of the delay it was taken for an imitation of Ivanhoe although its composition had, in fact, preceded Scott's novel. It was soon dramatised with great success by Planché, and was translated into French and German. Peacock's salary was now £1000 a year, and in 1823 he acquired a country residence at Lower Halliford, near Shepperton, Middlesex, constructed out of two old cottages, where he could gratify the love of the Thames, which was as strong as his enthusiasm for classical literature. In the winter of 1825–26 he wrote Paper Money Lyrics and other Poems "during the prevalence of an influenza to which the beautiful fabric of paper-credit is periodically subject." In his early time at the India Office he wrote little except for the operatic criticisms which he regularly contributed to The Examiner, and an occasional article in the Westminster Review or Bentley's Miscellany.

Peacock showed great ability in business and in the drafting of official papers. In 1829 he began to devote attention to steam navigation, and composed a memorandum for General Chesney's Euphrates expedition, which was praised both by Chesney and Lord Ellenborough. He opposed the employment of steamers on the Red Sea, probably in deference to the supposed interests of the company. In 1829 he published The Misfortunes of Elphin founded upon Welsh traditions , and in 1831 the novel Crotchet Castle, the most mature and thoroughly characteristic of all his works. He was greatly affected by the death of his mother in 1833 and said himself that he never wrote anything with interest afterwards.

Peacock often appeared before parliamentary committees as the company's champion. In this role in 1834, he resisted James Silk Buckingham's claim to compensation for his expulsion from the East Indies, and in 1836, he defeated the attack of the Liverpool merchants and Cheshire manufacturers upon the Indian salt monopoly. In 1836 his official career was crowned by his appointment as Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence, in succession to James Mill. The post was one which could only be filled by someone of sound business capacity and exceptional ability in drafting official documents: and Peacock's discharge of its duties, it is believed, suffered nothing by comparison either with his distinguished predecessor or his still more celebrated successor, Stuart Mill. In 1837 appeared his Paper Money Lyrics and other Poems of which only one hundred copies were printed. Also in 1837, Headlong Hall, Nightmare Abbey, Maid Marian, and Crotchet Castle appeared together as vol. 57 of Bentley's Standard Novels. During 1839 and 1840 Peacock superintended the construction of iron steamers which rounded the Cape, and took part in the Chinese war.

Peacock's occupation was principally with finance, commerce, and public works.

He wrote a poem on "A Day at the India Office":

From ten to eleven, have breakfast for seven;

From eleven to noon, think you've come too soon;

From twelve to one, think what's to be done;

From one to two, find nothing to do;

From two to three, think it will be

A very great bore to stay till four.

In about 1852 towards the end of Peacock's service in the India office, his zeal or leisure for authorship returned, and he began to contribute to Fraser's Magazine in which appeared his entertaining and scholarly Horæ Dramaticæ, a restoration of the Querolus, a Roman comedy probably of the time of Diocletian, and his reminiscences of Shelley.

Later life

Peacock retired from the India House on 29 March 1856 with an ample pension. In his retirement he seldom left Halliford and spent his life among his books, and in the garden, in which he took great pleasure, and on the River Thames. In 1860 he still showed vigour by the publication in Fraser's Magazine of Gryll Grange, his last novel. In the same year he added the appendix of Shelley's letters. His last writings were two translations, Gl' Ingannati (The Deceived) a comedy, performed at Siena in 1861 and Ælia Lælia Crispis of which a limited edition was circulated in 1862.

Peacock died at Lower Halliford, 23 January 1866, from injuries sustained in a fire in which he had attempted to save his library, and is buried in the new cemetery at Shepperton.

His granddaughter remembered him in these words:

In society my grandfather was ever a welcome guest, his genial manner, hearty appreciation of wit and humour in others, and the amusing way in which he told stories made him a very delightful acquaintance; he was always so agreeable and so very witty that he was called by his most intimate friends the "Laughing Philosopher", and it seems to me that the term "Epicurean Philosopher", which I have often heard applied to him, describes him accurately and briefly. In public business my grandfather was upright and honourable; but as he advanced in years his detestation of anything disagreeable made him simply avoid whatever fretted him, laughing off all sorts of ordinary calls upon his leisure time.

Sir Edward Strachey wrote of him:

A kind-hearted, genial, friendly man, who loved to share his enjoyment of life with all around him, and self-indulgent without being selfish .

Richard Garnett in the Dictionary of National Biography described Peacock as:

a rare instance of a man improved by prosperity; an element of pedantry and illiberality in his earlier writings gradually disappears in genial sunshine, although, with the advance of age, obstinate prejudice takes its place, good humoured, but unamenable to argument. The vigour of his mind is abundantly proved by his successful transaction of the uncongenial commercial and financial business of the East India Company; and his novels, their quaint prejudices apart, are almost as remarkable for their good sense as for their wit. But for this penetrating sagacity, constantly brought to bear upon the affairs of life, they would seem mere humorous extravaganzas, being farcical rather than comic, and almost entirely devoid of plot and character. They overflow with merriment from end to end, though the humour is frequently too recondite to be generally appreciated, and their style is perfect. They owe much of their charm to the simple and melodious lyrics with which they are interspersed, a striking contrast to the frigid artificiality of Peacock's more ambitious attempts in poetry. As a critic, he was sensible and sound, but neither possessed nor appreciated the power of his contemporaries, Shelley and Keats, to reanimate classical myths by infusion of the modern spirit.[1]

Family

Peacock married Jane Griffith or Gryffydh in 1820. In his "Letter to Maria Gisborne", Shelley referred to Jane as "the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope." Peacock had four children, a son Edward who was a champion rower, and three daughters. One of them, Mary Ellen, married the novelist George Meredith as her second husband in August 1849. Only his son survived him, and he for less than a year, but he left several grandchildren. Jane Peacock died in 1865. Canada boasts the majority of Peacock relatives including Tommy Peacock.  

145-] English Literature

145-] English Literature

Thomas Love Peacock - Summary

Thomas Love Peacock, (born Oct. 18, 1785, Weymouth, Dorset, Eng.—died Jan. 23, 1866, Lower Halliford, Middlesex), English author who satirized the intellectual tendencies of his day in novels in which conversation predominates over character or plot . His best verse is interspersed in his novels.Peacock met Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812, and the two became such close friends that Shelley made Peacock executor of his will. Peacock spent several months near the Shelleys at Great Marlow in 1817, a period of great importance to his development as a writer. The ideas that lie behind many of the witty dialogues in his books probably found their origin in the conversation of Shelley and his friends. Peacock’s essay The Four Ages of Poetry (1820) provoked Shelley’s famous Defence of Poetry (written 1821, published 1840).Peacock considered his novels to be “comic romances.” Headlong Hall (1816), the first of his seven novels, already sets the pattern of all of them: characters seated at table, eating and drinking, and embarking on learned and philosophical discussions in which many common opinions of the day are criticized . In his best-known work, Nightmare Abbey (1818), romantic melancholy is satirized, with the characters Scythrop drawn from Shelley, Mr. Flosky from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Mr. Cypress from Lord Byron.

Peacock worked most of his life for the East India Company. He was an able administrator, and in 1836 he succeeded James Mill as chief examiner, retiring on a pension in 1856.  

144-] English Literature

144-] English Literature

Female suicide in Hemans' works

Several of Hemans's characters take their own lives rather than suffer the social, political and personal consequences of their compromised situations. At Hemans's time, women writers were often torn between a choice of home or the pursuit of a literary career. Hemans herself was able to balance both roles without much public ridicule, but left hints of discontent through the themes of feminine death in her writing. The suicides of women in Hemans's poetry dwell on the same social issue that was confronted both culturally and personally during her life: the choice of caged domestication or freedom of thought and expression.

"The Bride of the Greek Isle", "The Sicilian Captive", "The Last Song of Sappho" and "Indian Woman's Death Song" are some of the most notable of Hemans' works involving women's suicides. Each poem portrays a heroine who is untimely torn from her home by a masculine force – such as pirates, Vikings, and unrequited lovers – and forced to make the decision to accept her new confines or command control over the situation. None of the heroines are complacent with the tragedies that befall them, and the women ultimately take their own lives in either a final grasp for power and expression or a means to escape victimisation.

Selected works

Coeur De Lion At The Bier Of His Father

Torches were blazing clear,

Hymns pealing deep and slow,

Where a king lay stately on his bier

In the church of Fontevraud .

As if each deeply furrowed trace

Of earthly years to show, -

Alas! that sceptred mortal's race

Had surely closed in woe!

And the holy chant was hushed awhile,

As, by the torch's flame,

A gleam of arms up the sweeping aisle

With a mail-clad leader came .

He came with haughty look,

An eagle-glance and clear;

But his proud heart through its breast-plate shook

When he stood beside the bier!

"Oh, father! is it vain,

This late remorse and deep ?

Speak to me, father! once again ,

I weep, - behold, I weep!

Alas! my guilty pride and ire!

Were but this work undone,

I would give England's crown, my sire!

To hear thee bless thy son .

"Thou that my boyhood's guide

Didst take fond joy to be! -

The times I've sported at thy side,

And climbed thy parent knee!

And there before the blessed shrine,

My sire! I see thee lie, -

How will that sad still face of thine

Look on me till I die!"

From the "Coeur De Lion At The Bier

Of His Father" poem

Poems by Felicia Dorothea Browne (1808)

"England and Spain" by Felicia Dorothea Browne (1808)

The Domestic Affections and Other Poems by Felicia Dorothea Browne (1812)

"Our Lady’s Well"

"On the Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy" (Two editions, 1816)

"Modern Greece" (1817)

Translations from Camoens; and Other Poets, with Original Poetry (1818)

Hymns on the Works of Nature, for the Use of Children

Records of Woman: With Other Poems

"The Better Land"

The Vespers of Palermo (1823, play)

Casabianca (1826, poem)

"Corinne at the Capitol"

"Evening Prayer at a Girls' School"

"A Farewell to Abbotsford"

"The Funeral Day of Sir Walter Scott"

"Hymn by the Sick-bed of a Mother"

"Kindred Hearts"

"The Last Song of Sappho"

"Lines Written in the Memoirs of Elizabeth Smith"

"The Rock of Cader Idris"

"Stanzas on the Late National Calamity, On the Death of the Princess Charlotte"

"Stanzas to the Memory of George III"

"Thoughts During Sickness: Intellectual Powers"

"To the Eye"

"To the New-Born"

"Woman on the Field of Battle"

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

1793–1835

Felicia Hemans Poems

SORT A-Z  POPULARITY

CasabiancaDesign and PerformanceDirgeFlight of the SpiritSabbath SonnetThe Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers

Felicia Dorothea Hemans Poems

1- Casabianca

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though childlike form.

 

The flames roll'd on...he would not go

Without his father's word;

That father, faint in death below,

His voice no longer heard.

 

He call'd aloud..."Say, father,say

If yet my task is done!"

He knew not that the chieftain lay

Unconscious of his son.

 

"Speak, father!" once again he cried

"If I may yet be gone!"

And but the booming shots replied,

And fast the flames roll'd on.

 

Upon his brow he felt their breath,

And in his waving hair,

And looked from that lone post of death,

In still yet brave despair;

 

And shouted but one more aloud,

"My father, must I stay?"

While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud

The wreathing fires made way,

 

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,

They caught the flag on high,

And stream'd above the gallant child,

Like banners in the sky.

 

There came a burst of thunder sound...

The boy-oh! where was he?

Ask of the winds that far around

With fragments strewed the sea.

 

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,

That well had borne their part;

But the noblest thing which perished there

Was that young faithful heart.

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

2- A Spirit's Return★★★★★★★★Thy voice prevails - dear friend, my gentle friend!

This long-shut heart for thee shall be unsealed,

And though thy soft eye mournfully will bend

3- Bring Flowers

Bring flowers, young flowers, for the festal board,

To wreathe the cup ere the wine is pour'd;

Bring flowers! they are springing in wood and vale,

Poem4.Alaric In Italy

Heard ye the Gothic trumpet's blast?

The march of hosts as Alaric passed?

His steps have tracked that glorious clime,

Poem5.Dirge

CALM on the bosom of thy God,

  Fair spirit, rest thee now!

E'en while with ours thy footsteps trod,

  His seal was on thy brow.

Poem6.Address To Music

OH thou! whose soft, bewitching lyre,

Can lull the sting of pain to rest;

Oh thou! whose warbling notes inspire,

Poem7.The Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers In New England

"Look now abroad--another race has fill'd

Those populous borders--wide the wood recedes,

And town shoots up, and fertile realms are till'd;

The land is full of harvests and green meads."--BRYANT

Poem8.An Hour Of Romance

There were thick leaves above me and around,

And low sweet sighs like those of childhood's sleep,

Amidst their dimness, and a fitful sound

Poem9.Address To Thought

OH thou! the musing, wakeful pow'r,

That lov'st the silent, midnight hour,

Thy lonely vigils then to keep,

And banish far the angel, sleep,

Poem10.A Monarch's Death-Bed

A monarch on his death-bed lay -

Did censors waft perfume,

And soft lamps pour their silvery ray,

Thro' his proud chamber's gloom?  

143- ] English Literature

143-] English Literature

 Felicia Hemans

Felicia Dorothea Hemans (25 September 1793 – 16 May 1835) was an English poet (who identified as Welsh by adoption). Two of her opening lines, "The boy stood on the burning deck" and "The stately homes of England", have acquired classic status.

Felicia Hemans was a 19th century poet of both English and Irish descent although she also considered herself half Welsh later in life. She was a prolific poet who received criticism and praise in almost equal measures. Female poets in the early 19th century were rare and not, generally, well regarded. Felicia Hemans though attracted the attention and admiration of poets such as Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor. When she died, at the early age of 41, Wordsworth and Landor composed memorial verses in her honour.

She was born on the 25th September 1793 in the city of Liverpool, which was the great gateway to England from Ireland at that time. She came from a well to do family and her grandfather was a consul to the city. The family moved to North Wales and Felicia saw her new Denbighshire home as the:

Wales became, in effect, her adoptive country and her first poetic efforts were published when she was just fourteen and received interest from Shelley. The two corresponded for a while.

A year later she wrote a long, narrative poem which was an extremely mature piece of work for a 15 year old girl. It was a plaintive cry against the Peninsular Wars that were raging between European countries and a direct attack on the tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte. She prayed for everlasting peace and that “Albion” should prevail, this being the old name for the British Isles. Her poetry clearly demonstrated her patriotism for her country and a passionate desire for no more “useless bloodshed” and no more “waste of human life”.

At the age of nineteen she was taken away from Wales by her marriage to an army officer, who was of a much greater age than her They set up home in Daventry, Northamptonshire for at least two years but the marriage lasted for only four more years beyond that. Despite being busy having five sons Felicia continued to write a great deal of poetry, publishing such titles as:

There are two pieces of work which, perhaps, are best remembered from her collections for different reasons. In 1827 she wrote a poem called The Homes of England and this is thought to contain the first reference to the phrase “The stately homes of England” In the 20th century the famous Noel Coward wrote a song with that title and it is a phrase that is still in common use. Arguably her most famous work though was the 1826 poem Casabianca about one Louis de Casabianca who was the commander of a burning ship during the Battle of the Nile. In it there is a reference to a boy who remains on deck while the ship burns and the first line has since been used in an amusing, slightly ribald, limerick. Here are the first three verses:

From 1831 Felicia was living in Dublin but, alas, her days were numbered. She was now a popular poet in Britain and the United States, especially amongst female readers. It was said that she offered “a woman’s voice confiding a woman’s trials” while others saw a:

Felicia Dorothea Hemans died on the 16th May 1835 of a curious illness called dropsy, which is an abnormal accumulation of fluid beneath the skin and in several cavities of the body. She was 41 years old.

Early life and education

Born in Liverpool, England, Romantic poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans was the daughter of a merchant and a granddaughter of the consul, and the fifth of seven children. Felicia Dorothea Browne was the daughter of George Browne, who worked for his father-in-law's wine importing business and succeeded him as Tuscan and imperial consul in Liverpool, and Felicity, daughter of Benedict Paul Wagner (1718–1806), wine importer at 9 Wolstenholme Square, Liverpool and Venetian consul for that city. Hemans was the fourth of six children (three boys and three girls) to survive infancy. Her sister Harriett collaborated musically with Hemans and later edited her complete works (7 vols. with memoir, 1839). George Browne's business soon brought the family to Denbighshire in North Wales, where she spent her youth. They lived in a cottage within the grounds of Gwrych Castle near Abergele when Felicia was seven years old until she was sixteen and later moved to Bronwylfa, St. Asaph (Flintshire); she later called Wales "Land of my childhood, my home and my dead". Lydia Sigourney says of her education:

The family relocated to Wales following a period of financial difficulty in 1800. A voracious and early reader, Hemans made use of an extensive home library and was instructed by her mother in several languages. She spent two winters in London as a child, and was captivated by the classical art she saw there.

Hemans published her first collection, Poems (1808), at the age of 14. She married Captain Alfred Hemans in 1812, and together they had five children. However, her husband did not return from a trip to Italy in 1818, and from then on Hemans had to support her family with the income from her poetry.

Influenced by William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, Hemans’s poetry was published in 19 volumes, including The Domestic Affections and other Poems (1812), Records of Woman: With Other Poems (1828), and Siege of Valencia (1823). Her metrically assured poems often explore domestic and romantic themes.

"The nature of the education of Mrs. Hemans , was favourable to the development of her genius. A wide range of classical and poetical studies, with the acquisition of several languages, supplied both pleasant aliment and needful discipline. She required not the excitement of a more public system of culture,—for the never-resting love of knowledge was her school master."

Hemans was proficient in Welsh, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Her sister Harriet remarked that "One of her earliest tastes was a passion for Shakspeare, which she read, as her choicest recreation, at six years old."

Career

Hemans’ first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in Liverpool in 1808, when she was fourteen, arousing the interest of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who briefly corresponded with her. She quickly followed them up with "England and Spain" (1808) and "The Domestic Affections" (1812).

From "Casabianca" (1826)

The boy stood on the burning deck,

 Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

 Shone round him o'er the dead .

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

 As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

 A proud though childlike form .

From "Casabianca" October 1826

Hemans‘ major collections, including The Forest Sanctuary (1825), Records of Woman and Songs of the Affections (1830) were popular, especially with female readers. Her last books, sacred and profane, were Scenes and Hymns of Life and National Lyrics, and Songs for Music. She was by now a well-known literary figure, highly regarded by contemporaries such as Wordsworth, and with a popular following in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Personal life

In 1812, she married Captain Alfred Hemans, an Irish army officer some years older than herself. The marriage took her away from Wales, to Daventry in Northamptonshire until 1814. During their first six years of marriage, Hemans gave birth to five sons, including G. W. Hemans and Charles Isidore Hemans, and then the couple separated. Marriage had not, however, prevented her from continuing her literary career, with several volumes of poetry being published by the respected firm of John Murray in the period after 1816, beginning with The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy (1816) and Modern Greece (1817). Tales and Historic Scenes was the collection which came out in 1819, the year of their separation.

From 1831, Hemans lived in Dublin. At her death of dropsy, William Wordsworth, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Lydia Huntley Sigourney and Walter Savage Landor composed memorial verses in her honour. She is buried in St. Ann's Church, Dawson Street.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Stanzas on the Death of Mrs Hemans, by L. E. L.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Felicia Hemans, by Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Legacy

Felicia Hemans

Hemans's works appeared in nineteen individual books during her lifetime. After her death in 1835, they were republished widely, usually as collections of individual lyrics and not the longer, annotated works and integrated series that made up her books. For surviving female poets, such as Caroline Norton and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Lydia Sigourney and Frances Harper, the French Amable Tastu and German Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, she was a valued model. To many readers she offered a woman's voice confiding a woman's trials; to others, a lyricism consonant with Victorian sentimentality. Among the works, she valued most were the unfinished "Superstition and Revelation" and the pamphlet "The Sceptic," which sought an Anglicanism more attuned to world religions and women's experiences. In her most successful book, Records of Woman (1828), she chronicles the lives of women, both famous and anonymous.

Hemans' poem "The Homes of England" (1827) is the origin of the phrase "stately home", referring to an English country house.

From "The Homes of England"

The stately Homes of England,

How beautiful they stand!

Amidst their tall ancestral trees,

O’er all the pleasant land;

The deer across their greensward bound

Through shade and sunny gleam,

And the swan glides past them with the sound

Of some rejoicing stream.

The free, fair Homes of England!

Long, long in hut and hall,

May hearts of native proof be reared

To guard each hallowed wall!

And green forever be the groves,

And bright the flowery sod,

Where first the child's glad spirit loves

Its country and its God.

From "The Homes of England"(1827)

Despite her illustrious admirers her stature as a serious poet gradually declined, partly due to her success in the literary marketplace. Her poetry was considered morally exemplary, and was often assigned to schoolchildren; as a result, Hemans came to be seen as more a poet for children rather than on the basis of her entire body of work. Schoolchildren in the U.S. were still being taught "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England" in the middle of the 20th century. But by the 21st century, "The Stately Homes of England" refers to Noël Coward's parody, not to the once-famous poem it parodied.

However, her critical reputation has been re-examined in recent years. Her work has resumed a role in standard anthologies and in classrooms and seminars and literary studies, especially in the US. Other anthologised poems include "The Image in Lava," "Evening Prayer at a Girls' School," "I Dream of All Things Free", "Night-Blowing Flowers", "Properzia Rossi", "A Spirit's Return", "The Bride of the Greek Isle", "The Wife of Asdrubal", "The Widow of Crescentius", "The Last Song of Sappho", "Corinne at the Capitol" and "The Coronation Of Inez De Castro".

Casabianca

First published in August 1826 the poem Casabianca (also known as The Boy stood on the Burning Deck) by Hemans depicts Captain Luc-Julien-Joseph Casabianca and his 12-year-old son, Giocante, who both perished aboard the ship Orient during the Battle of the Nile. The poem was very popular from the 1850s on and was memorized in elementary schools for literary practice. Other poetic figures such as Elizabeth Bishop and Samuel Butler allude to the poem in their own works.

"'Speak, Father!' once again he cried / 'If I may yet be gone! / And'—but the booming shots replied / And fast the flames rolled on." 'Casabianca' by Felicia Hemans.

The poem is sung in ballad form (abab) and consists of a boy asking his father whether he had fulfilled his duties, as the ship continues to burn until the magazine catches fire. Hemans adds the following note to the poem: 'Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile) after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned, and perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the powder.'

Martin Gardner, Michael R. Turner, and others wrote modern-day parodies that were much more upbeat and consisted of boys stuffing their faces with peanuts and bread. This contrasted sharply with the dramatic image created in Casabianca as Hemans wrote it.

England and Spain, or, Valour and Patriotism

Her second book, England and Spain, or, Valour and Patriotism, was published in 1808 and was a narrative poem honouring her brother and his military service in the Peninsular War. The poem called for an end to the tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte and for a long-lasting peace. Multiple references to Albion, an older name for Great Britain, emphasize Hemans's patriotism.

"For this thy noble sons have spread alarms, and bade the zones resound with BRITAIN's arms!" 

142- ] English Literature

142-] English Literature

Felicia Dorothea Hemans – Summary 

Felicia Dorothea Hemans, (born Sept. 25, 1793, Liverpool—died May 16, 1835, Dublin), English poet who owed the immense popularity of her poems to a talent for treating Romantic themes—nature, the picturesque, childhood innocence, travels abroad, liberty, the heroic—with an easy and engaging fluency. Poems (1808), written when she was between 8 and 13, was the first of a series of 24 volumes of verse; from 1816 to 1834 one or more appeared almost every year.

At 19 she married Capt. Alfred Hemans, but they separated seven years later; her prolific output helped to support her five children. She became a literary celebrity, admired by such famous older writers as William Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott. Often diffuse and sentimental, she has been chiefly remembered for her shorter pieces, notably “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers,” “Dirge,” “Casabianca” (“The boy stood on the burning deck”), and “The Homes of England” (“The stately homes of England”), but was perhaps at her best in her sequence of poems on female experience, Records of Women (1828).

 

141-) English Literature

141-) English Literature

Leigh Hunt 

 Literary Career

Leigh Hunt, prolific poet, essayist, and journalist, was a central figure of the Romantic movement in England. He produced a large body of poetry in a variety of forms: narrative poems, satires, poetic dramas, odes, epistles, sonnets, short lyrics, and translations from Greek, Roman, Italian, and French poems. His vivid descriptions and lyrical quality are noteworthy, as is his keen delight in nature, and he is a master of mood and atmosphere. As a poet, he played a major role in freeing the couplet from the rigidity of neoclassical practice. He had remarkable insights as a literary critic and discovered and introduced the public to many poets, among them John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson. He encouraged many other writers, such as Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Walter Savage Landor, and Charles Dickens. He was a journalist of note and was editor of the influential Examiner from its inception in 1808 to his departure for Italy in 1821. He was also the author of a novel and several plays, two of which, A Legend of Florence (1840) and Lovers' Amazements (1858), were produced during his lifetime.

He was born James Henry Leigh Hunt on October 19, 1784 to, Isaac, a lawyer from Barbados, and Mary Shewell Hunt, the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia. As staunch Tories, they were fled from Philadelphia to England at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. There, Isaac became a popular Anglican preacher but was so impractical and improvident that he spent a good deal of time in debtor's prison, of which Hunt has some of his earliest memories. Isaac Hunt did manage, though, to find his son a place in Christ's Hospital school in 1791. There, Hunt received all his formal education, staying until 1799

Hunt's first volume of poems, Juvenilia, was written at school and published by subscription in 1801 through the auspices of his father, who was able to amass a long list of notable subscribers from the United States as well as England. The volume contains translations, sonnets, pastorals, elegies, and hymns imitating Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, and William Collins. It was an instant success, going through four editions by 1804 and was praised by leading literary reviews as showing promise for such a young poet.

After his schooling, Hunt served an apprenticeship as clerk to his barrister brother, Stephen, but disliked the work intensely. In 1805 his brother John started a weekly paper, The News. As drama critic for it, Hunt gained a reputation for being perceptive and impartial at a time when impartiality was rare. In fact, he was so intent upon being impartial that he refused the acquaintance of any actor whom he might have to review, lest the acquaintance color his criticism. His critical essays in The News were sufficiently popular that in 1807 he was able to publish a selection of them as Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres. Hunt's real career as a journalist, however, began in 1808 when he became editor of The Examiner with his brother John as publisher. Very shortly after entering on the editorship, he felt it necessary to resign his clerkship in the war office, which he had held since 1803, because of a possible future conflict of interest with his liberal editorials. The Examiner became an influential weekly, and Hunt developed a wide reputation not only for his literary criticism but for his political essays. On July 3, 1809, after several years of courtship, Hunt married Marianne Kent, daughter of a court milliner.

In 1811, Hunt began editing the first of his many journals, The Reflector, a political magazine that includes essays and poetry. Hunt's satirical "The Feast of the Poets" was first published in the March 1812 issue of The Reflector. It is an attempt, with copious notes, at poetical criticism. In it Apollo descends for a feast with the chief contemporary poets but dismisses, with varying degrees of contempt, all except four—Thomas Campbell, Robert Southey, Sir Walter Scott, and Thomas Moore. In the 1814 edition, which was much altered from the original, William Wordsworth is hailed as "Prince of Bards" and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and George Gordon, Lord Byron, are given places. This change caused apparent consternation among some reviewers since these poets had been summarily dismissed in the earlier version of the poem. Actually, however, most reviewers, whether writing favorably or unfavorably, seemed to be moved more by politics than critical judgment, the reason being that as outspoken liberal editor of The Examiner, Hunt had won many admirers but also many political enemies. Consequently, at least as long as he was editor, his literary works tended to be praised or damned according to the politics of the reviewer. Thus, on the one hand, Feast of the Poets was condemned "as despicable a performance as could well be produced. It is flimsy, feeble, unsustained and impertinent" (Satirist, April 1814) and on the other as a "lively" and "sublime" poem (Eclectic Review, June 1814; Champion, February 20, 1814).

On March 22, 1812 Hunt, in an Examiner editorial and as a part of an ongoing attack on the Prince Regent, slandered him as a fat "Adonis" of 50. As a result he and his brother John spent two years (February 3, 1813 to February 2, 1815) in prison and paid fines of £500 each. Hunt's was an unusual incarceration. He was permitted to continue editing The Examiner from prison, which he did with little change in the tone of his editorials. During his prison stay Hunt wrote his first long narrative poem, The Story of Rimini. It was particularly praised by Byron, who read drafts of the poem as it progressed and to whom it was eventually dedicated. Based on the few lines about Francesca di Rimini in Dante's Inferno, The Story of Rimini tells of the fatal passion between Paulo and Francesca, whom Paulo escorted from her home in Ravenna to Rimini, where she was to be married to his brother, Prince Giovanni, and the tragedy that follows the revelation of their love.

In 1816 Hunt made friends with Keats and renewed his friendship with Shelley, whom he had first met briefly in 1811. In December 1816 he introduced them and their poems to the public in the Examiner. Not long thereafter, John Gibson Lockhart, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (October 1817), began his anonymous, bitter attacks on Hunt and his friends, whom he scornfully dubbed the "Cockney School." Lockhart, whose criticism of Keats and Hazlitt was particularly sharp, was shortly joined by the Quarterly Review, under the editorship of William Gifford. The attacks continued for several years, but except for a fruitless demand in the Examiner at the outset that the anonymous writer of the attacks in Blackwood's reveal his identity, Hunt did not answer save in defense of Keats and Shelley. Not only did Hunt, Keats, and Shelley visit frequently, but in 1817 Hunt and his entire family stayed in Marlowe with Shelley for several months, and in 1820 Keats, mortally ill with tuberculosis, stayed with Hunt for several months in his cottage at Hampstead Heath. During the many visits poetic skills were honed with poetry-writing competitions, and the heady relationships resulted in publication of several volumes of poetry by the three before Shelley and Keats went to Italy for their health in 1818 and 1820 respectively.

Hunt's most prolific period of poetic activity occurred in the years 1812 to 1820. In 1818 Hunt published Foliage, his first volume of poetry since Juvenilia, which includes one of his best poems, "The Nymphs." Hunt not only continued editing the Examiner, but also two more journals: The Literary Pocket Book, begun in 1818, and The Indicator (1819-1821), which contains essays full of good cheer, on literature, life, manners, morals, and nature. Lamb was so enthusiastic about it that he hailed it with a sonnet. In 1819, Hunt published two more narrative poems: "Hero and Leander," which retells the familiar story of Leander swimming the Hellespont to visit Hero, and "Bacchus and Ariadne," which describes the procession of Bacchus toward Ariadne, who has just been abandoned by Theseus on the isle of Naxos. Though shorter, they are like The Story of Rimini in their slight action but considerable lavish description and frequent appreciation of the physical. Peter George Patmore, the reviewer of these two poems for the London Magazine (July 1820), praised at length Hunt's delicate verse, love of nature, and originality. Also in 1819 The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt was published in three volumes including all the poems he had published to that time with the exception of his juvenile poems. Another narrative poem, Hunt's translation of Torquato Tasso's Amyntas, a Tale of the Woods, was printed in 1820.

In the fall of 1821 Shelley and Byron persuaded Hunt to come to Italy and edit a literary journal, eventually called The Liberal, that the three of them would write. Hunt set out on November 15, 1821 with his family, but frightful winter storms forced the ship to turn back. Because of further delays, he did not sail until May 13 ,1822 and arrived on July 1. Within days of Hunt’s arrival, Shelley drowned in a sudden squall during his return home to Lerici. Shelley's death not only shattered Hunt emotionally, but put him in a particularly difficult financial situation. He and his family of seven were destitute and in debt for the trip to Italy. Hunt had planned to live on the generosity offered by Shelley until The Liberal was established, but Shelley's death threw him on the mercy of Byron, who did not like Hunt much and detested his family. Furthermore, Shelley had been the chief spirit behind The Liberal, and his death left the uneasy partnership of Byron and Hunt to produce the journal. They held together barely long enough to publish four issues. The majority of each issue was written by Hunt with Byron contributing and Mary Shelley providing some previously unpublished short poems by Shelley. Other contributors included Hazlitt, Mary Shelley, Horace Smith, Charles Armitage Brown, and Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Among the poems Hunt published in The Liberal was "The Dogs," a political satire suggesting that Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, treated his dogs better than his men and concluding that, if dogs are to be treated better, they should be put in the aristocracy and go to heaven. The Liberal, though one of the highest quality periodicals of the early 19th century, did not last long. While the first issue sold a very encouraging four thousand copies, a tremendous sale for the time, the second number lost money because of higher costs and smaller sales, and the third and fourth numbers barely covered costs. Also, Byron's interests soon shifted to Greece, where he went in 1823 to help fight Turkey (and to die in 1824), leaving Hunt and his family stranded in Italy with little means of support.

Hunt was unable to return to England until September 1825, when publisher Henry Colburn sent him a sufficient advance on a work to be written about Byron to cover expenses. Shortly after his return he published another narrative poem, the rollicking Bacchus in Tuscany (1825), translated from the Italian of Francesco Redi. The work which provided the means for him to return to England, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, was not published until 1828. It aroused a considerable stir because of Hunt's less-than-flattering statements about Byron, saying that he was, among other things, ill-tempered, ill-educated, superstitious, ungenerous, and lacking in taste. The public's general reaction was adverse, accusing Hunt of distorting the picture of Byron out of pure opportunism. His comments about Byron years later in his Autobiography (1850) were considerably more tolerant.

The 1830s were most difficult for Hunt. His influential days as editor of The Examiner were past as were his heady days with the great Romantic poets, and his reputation was at its lowest ebb. He lived through the decade in poverty and poor health. During the decade Hunt was forced by his debts to write constantly. In 1830 he started a new journal, The Chat of the Week, which shortly metamorphosed into The Tatler when the post office required too much postage because of its shape. The Tatler, which was devoted to literature and the stage, was something of a tour de force. For the 17 months of its existence Hunt wrote almost every word of the daily four folio pages. In 1832 he published two distinctive prose works. The first was a distillation of his religious philosophy in a book of exercises and meditations titled Christianism: or, Belief and Unbelief Reconciled, which was revised and enlarged in 1853 as The Religion of the Heart. The second was his sole novel, Sir Ralph Esher, a fictitious autobiography of a nobleman in the time of Charles II, which went through three editions in four years. He also edited two more journals: Leigh Hunt's London Journal (1834-1835), which was one of his best and most successful, and The Monthly Repository (1837-1838). The decade was not all work, however. He befriended Thomas Carlyle, whose wife was the inspiration for Hunt's often-anthologized, simple, and charming rondeau, "Jenny Kiss’d Me" (first published in the Monthly Chronicle, November 1838):

In 1835 Hunt published the intensely antiwar poem Captain Sword and Captain Pen. Notable primarily for its vivid descriptions of the horrors of war, the poem consists of six descriptive sections beginning with Captain Sword and his army marching to battle, the battle, a victory ball, the battlefield at night, the loss of Sword's reason and the rise of Captain Pen, and, finally, the nonviolent combat of Pen leading to a Romantic apocalypse. The 1830s also saw the publication of one of his best-remembered poems, "The Glove and the Lions," (May 1836) first published in the New Monthly Magazine. In it, a lady, as a love test, drops her glove among lions for her lover to retrieve; he does so and throws it in her face. Perhaps Hunt's own favorite, "Abou Ben Adhem," first published in S. C. Hall's Book of Gems (1838), is a simple poem bearing the theme that to love man is the same as to love God. It also includes the line used as Hunt's epitaph: "Write me as one who loves his fellow men." In the July 1837 issue of the Monthly Repository Hunt published a kind of companion poem to The Feast of the Poets, "Blue Stocking Revels," a criticism of many contemporary women writers.

The 1840s began on an exultant note for Hunt with the successful production of his poetic drama A Legend of Florence at the Covent Garden theater . The decade also saw publication Hunt’s long poem, The Palfrey: A Love Story of Old Times, published in 1842. In this nine-hundred-line poem Hunt transforms a medieval French fabliau into a sunny romantic world full of animal spirits and warm humor, as two old men, Sir Guy and Sir Grey, plot the marriage of Sir Grey to Sir Guy's daughter. During this time, he also edited two anthologies of poetry: Imagination and Fancy (1844), a collection of his favorite poems with a critical essay on his philosophy of poetry, and Wit and Humour (1846), a selection from English poets with critical comments. His remaining publications of the decade were prose works though he also edited one last journal, the weekly Leigh Hunt's Journal (December 1850-March 1851). Toward the end of the decade Hunt finally became somewhat more secure financially. In 1844 he had begun receiving a £120 annuity promised by Shelley before he died but delayed until the death of Shelley's father. To this was added in 1847 a Civil List Pension of £200 annually from the government for his services to literature.

By the last decade of his life, Hunt's literary activities and reputation had changed. He was no longer the vigorous reformer of The Examiner but a gentle essayist, poet, and critic. His reputation in the United States was at its height, as evidenced by the several editions of his works published there during the 1850s and the visits paid to him by American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The 1850s were also a time of grief: In 1852 Hunt's youngest son, Vincent, died of tuberculosis; Charles Dickens, though a friend of Hunt's, satirized him as Skimpole in Bleak House (1853); and his wife died in 1857.

His final decade saw the publication of Hunt's Autobiography (1850), perhaps his best work and arguably the best autobiography of the century. It concentrates on the early years, using as a basis the material from Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries. The Autobiography is filled with portraits of the famous and the ordinary, and Hunt comes through as cheerful, optimistic, generous, and impulsive. Tolerance and lack of rancor are typical of the book, and especially notable are the mild comments where one might have expected sharper criticism, on the Prince Regent, Byron, Dickens, and old enemies. On the whole the work is vivacious, graceful, and interesting, and marked throughout by Hunt's modesty. In 1855 Hunt wrote and published one last volume, Stories in Verse, and edited selections from the works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. In 1858 his second poetic drama, the comedy Lovers' Amazements, was produced. It was received warmly, reviewed handsomely, and bid fair to become popular, but, at the moment of triumph, the manager, Charles Dillon, went bankrupt, and the play and theater closed together. Hunt continued his literary activity to the end, publishing poems and essays in Dickens's journal Household Words, The Musical Times, Fraser's Magazine, and the Spectator. He died on August 28, 1859 while visiting a friend in the country.

Final years

In 1844 Mary Shelley and her son, on succeeding to the family estates, settled an annuity of £120 upon Hunt (Rossetti 1890). In 1847 Lord John Russell set up a pension of £200 for Hunt.

With his finances in better shape, Hunt published the companion books Imagination and Fancy (1844) and Wit and Humour (1846). These were two volumes of selections from English poets, which displayed his refined, discriminating critical tastes. Hunt also published a book on the pastoral poetry of Sicily, A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla (1848). The Town (2 vols., 1848) and Men, Women and Books (2 vols., 1847) are partly made up from former material. The Old Court Suburb (2 vols., 1855; ed. A Dobson, 2002) is a sketch of Kensington, where Hunt long resided.

In 1850 Hunt published his Autobiography (3 vols.). It has been described as a naive and affected, but accurate, piece of self-portraiture. Hunt published A Book for a Corner (2 vols.) in 1849 and Table Talk appeared in 1851. In 1855, he published his narrative poems, both original and translated, under the title Stories in Verse.

Hunt died in Putney in London on 28 August 1859. He was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. In September 1966, Christ's Hospital named one of its houses in the memory of Hunt. Today, a residential street in his birthplace of Southgate is named Leigh Hunt Drive in his honour.

Depiction by Charles Dickens

In a letter of 25 September 1853, Charles Dickens stated that Hunt had inspired the character of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House; "I suppose he is the most exact portrait that was ever painted in words! ... It is an absolute reproduction of a real man". A contemporary critic commented, "I recognized Skimpole instantaneously; ... and so did every person whom I talked with about it who had ever had Leigh Hunt's acquaintance." G. K. Chesterton suggested that Dickens "May never once have had the unfriendly thought, 'Suppose Hunt behaved like a rascal!'; he may have only had the fanciful thought, 'Suppose a rascal behaved like Hunt!'" (Chesterton 1906).