Today we turned the page on a new week at the Pocket Univ. Guide to Daily Reading.

Sitting last winter among my books, and walled around with all the comfort and protection which they and my fireside could afford me– to wit, a table of higher piled books at my back, my writing desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of a warm fire at my feet– I began to consider how I loved the authors of these books.

Leigh Hunt

From that infallible source:

Hunt co-founded The Examiner, a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the centre of the Hampstead-based group that included William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, known as the ‘Hunt circle’. Hunt also introduced John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson to the public.

Hunt’s presence at Shelley’s funeral on the beach near Viareggio was immortalised in the painting by Louis Édouard Fournier, although in reality Hunt did not stand by the pyre, as portrayed. Hunt inspired aspects of the Harold Skimpole character in Charles Dickens‘ novel Bleak House. ^[1]

Here’s a question. How does that infallible source know where folks were standing at Shelley’s funeral? He died in 1822. That in fallible source tells me the first practical photographic process was developed in 1833.

Guide to Daily Reading June 18

• Hawthorne’s Ethan Brand

Holy smoke.

Perhaps a poor choice of words.

A reminder, the Daily Readings can be read in 15-30 minutes.

Stay well. Stay safe. And for the love of God, do not go looking for the Unpardonable Sin. Seriously.