The nineteenth-century poet and critic Leigh Hunt was an important figure in the Romantic era of English literature. His stature has been enhanced by the large collection of his books, manuscripts, and letters gathered early in the twentieth century by Luther A. Brewer, an Iowa bibliophile, printer, businessman, and political activist.

Luther Albertus Brewer was born on 17 December 1858 in Welsh Run, Pennsylvania, just north of Hagerstown, Maryland. At the age of eight he left the home of his parents, Jacob and Kate Brewer, to live with an aunt and uncle, first in Sharpsburg, Maryland, and then on a farm near Hagerstown. It was while he was a student in a Maryland grammar school that Brewer became a lover of books: after reading The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) he began to buy inexpensive editions of the novels of Charles Dickens as they were published by the Seaside Library. Around the...