About the Author

Anthony Holden, biographer of Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, Laurence Olivier and Prince Charles, was made a Fellow of the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library while researching this book.

Reviews

*'I am tearing through THE WIT IN THE DUNGEON with avaricious pleasure ... Gripping and wonderful' Stephen Fry *'[Holden] is well placed to appreciate Hunt's contradictions ... a level-headed affectionate portrait' DAILY TELEGRAPH *'Very well-researched and extremely readable' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *'Enthusiastic and sensible' GUARDIAN *'Roe leaves Hunt on the Italian shore with Shelley's body, promising a further volume. This is unsatisfying. Holden tells the full story' DAILY MAIL '[Holden is] courageous in his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Hunt as a poet ... he also gives us some fascinating new material' Michael Glover, FT MAGAZINE 'Anthony Holden's THE WIT IN THE DUNGEON is a more concise single-volume account of Hunt's eventful political life ... it is Holden, surveying the whole life, who tells the best stories ... Holden's biography is concise and unfailingly readable' Andrew Biswell, SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY 'Roe leaves Hunt on the beach at Viaregio, watching the flames play over the body of his heart's darling, Shelley. If you want to know what Hunt did next, then you must turn to Holden ... vivid and dramatic' Suzi Feay, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 'Mr Holden's pages on Thomas Carlyle's admiration, friendship and eventual exasperation [with Hunt] are especially telling, as is his dissection of Dickens, who clouded Hunt's last years with a cruel caricature of him as Harold Skimpole in BLEAK HOUSE' ECONOMIST 'Holden delivers a racy, engaging narrative, doffing his cap to literary critics ... Holden's strength is that he attends to Hunt's "afterlife" - his Victorian period, which Roe does not cover. This is in some ways the best part of THE WIT IN THE DUNGEON, as when he deals with Dickens's involvement and rightly exposes Dickens's slippery denials over the Skimpole affair' Duncan Wu, INDEPENDENT 'Anthony Holden's THE WIT IN THE DUNGEON covers the whole of Hunt's life with commendable verve ... Hunt is a fellow to be respected both for what he was and for what his more gifted contemporaries saw in him' Robert Nye, SCOTSMAN 'Anthony Holden has written a biography for the general reader ... he is a shrewd and skilful writer, and makes good use of sources. His account of the Examiner trial is a particularly successful set piece, and he has an excellent chapter on relations between Hunt and Dickens, the old lion and the young cub' LITERARY REVIEW 'Holden hints at the real reason for Hunt's marginalisation in his readable biography - Shelley was heir to a baronetcy, Byron was a lord but Hunt did not even belong to the wealthy merchant class ... As it is, only in the last few years have academics been paying serious attention to this remarkable figure. Perhaps, at last, his time has come' Lesley McDowell, SUNDAY HERALD 'Using the abundant written sources of the epoch, he has produced a long, well-researched life of Hunt from his fame as a schoolboy poet in 1800 to his death in 1859' SPECTATOR 'Pick up THE WIT IN THE DUNGEON. Holden makes sure you know who everyone is at the time he introduces them, and tactfully reminds you when you have forgotten. He has a punchy style and a feeling for anecdote - entertaining you with details ... He keeps a complicated story moving, like a good host at a good party, and the story has an upbeat ending. You become acquainted with an energetic, sociable, misunderstood, path-breaking journalist whose time has come at long last' IRISH TIMES