ABSTRACT
First published in The Descent of Liberty:A Mask, London: Gale, Curtis and Fenner, 1815. The drama was republished by the same company in the following year, in an edition that was subsequently used in the second volume of 1819. It was not republished thereafter during Hunt’s lifetime. The Descent of Liberty was written in prison. Prompted by the abdication of the French Emperor in April 1814, the masque was completed by early July (the poet’s dedication to his schoolfriend Thomas Barnes, who had been highly supportive of The Examiner and its editor during his imprisonment, is signed ‘Leigh Hunt, Surrey Jail, July 10, 1814’). As Hunt writes in his Autobiography, the Descent of Liberty is ‘a masque on the downfall of Napoleon’. When published, it was prefaced by the republication of his first response to the abdication, the ‘Ode for the Spring of 1814’, which had appeared in the Examiner on 17 April 1814.
