ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the shared literary interest Byron and Hunt found in the episode of Paolo and Francesca from Dante’s Inferno. Hunt’s poetical retelling of the episode in The Story of Rimini sparked a series of epistolary exchanges about Italian literature and English poetry that was crowned by Byron’s reading of Rimini in manuscript, upon which he left incisive marginalia. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Rimini’s publication and reception history that confirms the strength of the Byron-Hunt friendship during its most congenial and creatively significant period.
