ABSTRACT
First published in The Liberal, I, 15 October 1822, pp. v–xii. The Liberal. Verse and Prose from the South was a brilliant but ill-fated quarterly that lasted just four issues. Famously, Lord Byron’s ‘The Vision of Judgment’ and William Hazlitt’s ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’ were originally published in its pages. Hunt was the editor and wrote over half the articles, while work by Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Horace Smith, Charles Brown, and Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1792–1862; DNB) also featured. It was published in London by Hunt’s brother John. William H. Marshall describes The Liberal as ‘of fundamental significance in understanding those participating in it’ (Marshall, p. viii).
