A Long Ago Kiss Remembered

If you’ve ever read a movie, TV, restaurant or play review, you have Leigh Hunt, 1748 - 1859, to thank. He revolutionized how plays get reviewed - because before Mr H, every play in London got a stellar write-up in newspapers and pamphlets, the reviewers simply wanting free tickets to the show, a practice that endured for decades. In a move shocking for the time, Hunt penned objective commentary of the performances he attended and the public loved it. The authorities, however, did not; LH spent time as a guest of His Majesty for that and other outrages. He co-founded The Examiner, a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the centre of the Hampstead-based group that included William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, known as the "Hunt circle". He introduced his friends John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson to literature-loving readers. I remember Leigh Hunt for another reason, now revealed.