SOURCE: Kearney, Colbert. “B. R. Haydon and The Examiner.” Keats-Shelley Journal 27 (1978): 108-29.

In the following essay, Kearney attempts to prove that Haydon was the author of several anonymous letters and articles published in the Hunts' paper The Examiner during the early 1800s, using entries in Haydon's Diary to validate his argument and maintaining that the published pieces attest to the close relationship between Haydon and the Hunts during that time.

Writing in The British Press for 3 July 1823, “An Observer” claimed that Haydon the historical painter—then in the King's Bench Prison for debt—had written critiques of his own work in The Examiner and in the Annals of the Fine Arts. Haydon complained of this to the editor of the Annals, James Elmes, who replied in a letter that was clearly intended to be shown to anybody who doubted Haydon's denial of the original charge:

I have no...