The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt has been taken at face-value by generations of readers and social historians. It is justly celebrated for its accounts of Hunt's experience as an eighteenth-century pupil at Christ's Hospital (which can be compared to those of Coleridge and Hunt's friend Charles Lamb); the transformation of his prison cell and garden at Horsemonger Lane and, more generally, his experience of imprisonment; Shelley's last days and his cremation on the beach at La Spezia; many memorable theatrical performances; the politically-charged drama of the law courts; the varieties of London (to which, as a proudly defiant 'Cockney', Hunt deliberately arrogated a particular significance); the shifting and sometimes terrifying realities of a sea-voyage; and Hunt's intimate perspectives into the lives of Shelley, Byron, Keats, Lamb, Moore, and many others. Yet, as this edition demonstrates, Hunt's Autobiography is a strategically constructed work which often proceeded through a number of stages before reaching a final equilibrium. For the first time since the book appeared in 1850, this text follows the version of the first edition, by which Hunt was generally known to his contemporaries, rather than the revised version of 1860, which was published after his death.

Leigh Hunt provides a series of vivid insights into London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as chapters on Genoa, Pisa and Florence. This richly-annotated edition prepared by Timothy Webb reprints Hunt's original text of 1850, rather than the revised version which was published after his death.