First edition.

First edition.

Although best remembered as friend and supporter to Keats and Shelley, Hunt was also a well-regarded and popular poet, and in this re-working of the tragedy of Paulo and Francesca from Dante's Inferno, he displays both his love of Italian literature and the reintroduction of freer verse forms into English poetry, both of which would inspire Keats, whom Hunt first met in 1816. Although its popularity has waned, it is still regarded as an important 'landmark in English poetry' (Mitchell).