In 1818 appeared a collection of poems entitled Foliage, followed in 1819 by Hero and Leander, and Bacchus and Ariadne. In the same year he reprinted these two works with The Story of Rimini and The Descent of Liberty with the title of Poetical Works, and started the Indicator, in which some of his best work appeared. Both Keats and Shelley belonged to the circle gathered around him at Hampstead, which also included william Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Bryan Procter, Benjamin Haydon, Charles Cowden Clarke, C.W. Dilke, Walter Coulson and John Hamilton Reynolds. This group was known as the Hunt Circle, or, pejoratively, as the Cockney School. Hunt was a man of varied talents, however. As a poet, he played a major role in freeing the couplet from the rigidity of neoclassical practice. He had remarkable insights as a literary critic and discovered and introduced to the public many poets, among them John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson. He encouraged many other Writers, such as Charles Lamb, william Hazlitt, Walter Savage Landor, and Charles Dickens. He was a Journalist of note, being Editor of the influential Examiner from its inception in 1808 to his departure for Italy in 1821. He was also Editor of several journals, and wrote for many more. Perhaps as a prose Writer he was best as an Essayist and has probably had more influence on the development of the personal essay than any other Writer. But he was also the author of a novel and several plays, two of which, A Legend of Florence and Lovers' Amazements, were produced (in 1840 and 1858, respectively). His varied literary achievements are sufficiently important to make him preeminent among secondary Writers of the Romantic period.