Leigh Hunt’s charming lyric “Jenny Kissed Me” was one of the more popular anthology poems of the nineteenth century. It was first published in the

for November 1838, originally opening with “Nelly kiss’d me when we met” and under the heading “Rondeau”, by which Hunt refers to that form’s repetition of the first line as a refrain. Hunt’s lyric does not really employ the first line as a refrain but repeats the first clause as the final line of the song. For his 1844

Hunt changed “Nelly” to “Jenny”. Tradition holds that Hunt did so in tribute to his close friend Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801–66), wife of the writer Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881). The 1844 version of the “Rondeau” is the most popular:

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,

306 words

Citation: Robinson, Daniel. "“Jenny Kissed Me”". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 June 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33059, accessed 21 November 2024.]