Leigh Hunt's "peculiar intimacy"

Since the publication of Louis Landre's book in 1936, French critics have shown practically no interest in Leigh Hunt's works in prose or verse. Yet, Hunt stands as a great figure of British Romanticism. He was at the centre of the political and cultural issues dominating the Regency period and the early Victorian age; devoting all his energies to the cause of Reform and contributing, in his own elegant, witty, humorous and imaginative style, to the making of what is called the familiar essay. Far from claiming to exhaust the subject, this paper emphasises a few decisive features of Hunt's style such as the "peculiar intimacy" he manages to create with his reader and the sheer enjoyment he experiences in the very act of writing.