Leigh Hunt's Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries (1828) is the only biography he produced in a literary career extraordinary for its length and breadth. He outlived most of his Romantic colleagues and presided over the movement's assumption into Victorian sensibility. Hunt had works published in every recognized genre and brought to publication works by many representative writers of the time, including its greatest geniuses. One of the most important of the minor Romantics, Hunt was the editor of and a major contributor to the Examiner, the most influential liberal magazine of the period. His political commentary made his reputation, but he is also credited with inventing serious, analytical drama criticism and with adapting and personalizing the periodical essay, setting a new tone and creating a taste for the next generation of practitioners, including his friend Charles Dickens. He "discovered" Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, seeing their...