Leigh Hunt is the forgotten giant of English Romanticism. The man
Virginia Woolf called the spiritual grandfather of the modern world was
descended from black Caribbeans and grew up a child of the American and
French Revolutions. A poet and radical journalist, he threw off the
shackles of the old order and campaigned tirelessly for Irish freedom
and the abolition of slavery. Unwilling to view the Prince of Wales as
an Adonis in Loveliness, Hunt was jailed for a diabolical libel that
presented the prince as he was: a corpulent 50-year-old, sodden with
drink and drugs. In prison, Hunt drew the homage of Lord Byron, and
discovered the Romantic geniuses Keats and Shelley. Hunt s own poetry
glows with the sexual frankness that characterized all his
relationships. Written with flair and brilliant imaginative insight,
"Fiery Heart" is a sparkling portrait of Leigh Hunt and the English
Romantics."