Thornton Leigh Hunt

As a child he lived in Hampstead until the age of twelve, when his father moved the family to Italy for three years in order to edit The Liberal.

Though he aspired to become a painter, an allergy to the pigments he was using thwarted Hunt's ambitions, though he did provide eight woodcuts to illustrate his father's poem 'Captain Sword and Captain Pen'.

He returned to London in 1840, where for the next several years he contributed to a variety of periodicals, co-founded The Leader with George Henry Lewes, and wrote a novel, The Foster-Brother: A tale of the War of Chiozza (1845).

[2] A Liberal, Hunt was cultivated by Lord Palmerston, and developed a close relationship to William Ewart Gladstone, serving as his journalistic amanuensis during much of the 1860s.

James Buchanan was at that time President of the United States and was attempting to counter civil war over the issue of slavery, mostly by adopting a vacillatory position.

The American owners dramatically altered the tone of the magazine, its circulation declined substantially and there were several occasions when Moran had to pump additional funds into the venture.