William Gibbes Hunt gained his considerable reputation during the two years he edited one of the first and best literary magazines published west of the Allegheny Mountains. The Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine contained poetry, political commentary, science, book reviews, natural history, and anecdotal history. It was an unusual publication in which a description of a battle with Indians followed an article lamenting the decline in the study of Greek. For most of his life Hunt was a newspaper editor who featured articles that were generally more literate than those of his contemporaries in frontier Kentucky and Tennessee.

Hunt was born in Boston, the son of Samuel Hunt and Elizabeth Gibbes Shepherd Hunt, the daughter of wealthy Charleston planter William Gibbes. Hunt studied under his father and Caleb Bingham, and, at the age of fifteen, he became the fourth in his family line to enter Harvard College, from...