Leigh Hunt

Leigh Hunt edited The Examiner and spent two years in prison for insulting the Prince Regent in print — he wallpapered his cell with roses, installed a piano, and received Byron there as a guest. As critic and editor he introduced both Keats and Shelley to the reading public.

His own immortality rests on two small poems. "Abou Ben Adhem" — the dreamer who asks the angel to "write me as one that loves his fellow men" and wakes to find his name leading all the rest — has been a favorite recitation piece for two centuries. "Jenny Kiss'd Me" records the moment Jane Carlyle jumped up and kissed him when he arrived with good news: eight lines of pure, time-defying delight.