In 1808 he left the War Office, where he had been working as a clerk, to become editor of the Examiner, a newspaper founded by his brother, John. Marianne’s sister, Elizabeth Kent (Hunt’s sister-in-law), became his amanuensis.

Leigh Hunt made little mention of his family in his autobiography. Marianne, who had been in ill health for most of her life, died 26 January 1857, aged sixty-nine. Over the next 20 years they had ten children: Thornton Leigh (1810–73), John Horatio Leigh (1812–46), Mary Florimel Leigh (1813–49), Swinburne Percy Leigh (1816–27), Percy Bysshe Shelley Leigh (1817–99), Henry Sylvan Leigh (1819–76), Vincent Leigh (1823–52), Julia Trelawney Leigh (1826–72), Jacyntha Leigh (1828–1914), and Arabella Leigh (1829–30). In 1809, Leigh Hunt married Marianne Kent (whose parents were Thomas and Ann). Hunt’s early essays were published by Edward Quin, editor and owner of The Traveller. He began to write for the newspapers, and published in 1807 a volume of theatre criticism, and a series of Classic Tales with critical essays on the authors. “For some time after I left school,” he says, “I did nothing but visit my school-fellows, haunt the book-stalls and write verses.” His poems were published in 1801 under the title of Juvenilia, and introduced him into literary and theatrical society. A speech impediment, later cured, prevented his going to university. As a boy, he was an ardent admirer of Thomas Gray and William Collins, writing many verses in imitation of them. One of the current boarding houses at Christ’s Hospital is named after him. He entered the school shortly after Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb had both left Thomas Barnes, however, was a school friend of his. Leigh Hunt was educated at Christ’s Hospital from 1791 to 1799, a period which is detailed in his autobiography. Hunt’s father was then employed by James Brydges, 3rd Duke of Chandos, as tutor to his nephew, James Henry Leigh (father of Chandos Leigh), after whom the boy was named. Hunt’s father took holy orders and became a popular preacher, but he was unsuccessful in obtaining a permanent living. His father Isaac, a lawyer from Philadelphia, and his mother, Mary Shewell, a merchant’s daughter and a devout Quaker, had been forced to come to Britain because of their loyalist sympathies during the American War of Independence. James Henry Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate, London, where his parents had settled after leaving the United States. James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 1784– 28 August 1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist, poet, and writer.

London Dusk by Leigh K. Hunt