Richard William Hunt (1908-1979) read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1927. His tutor, R.A.B. Mynors, encouraged his interest in the study of manuscripts, medieval libraries, and the transmission of texts, and in 1931, with a senior scholarship at Christ Church, he went to Munich for a year to work under the direction of Paul Lehmann. On his return to Oxford he began research for a doctorate on Alexander Nequam (1157–1217), which he completed in 1936.

Hunt was appointed Lecturer in Palaeography at Liverpool University in 1934. The results of his research on medieval libraries, along with Mynors, N.R. Ker, C.R. Cheney, and J.R. Liddell, appeared under Ker's editorship in 1941 as Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: a List of Surviving Books. In the mid-1930s, he and his co-editor, Raymond Klibansky, began work on the journal, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, which appeared occasionally between 1941 and 1968.

In 1945, Hunt returned to Oxford as Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library and Fellow of Balliol College. From 1948 to 1975 he was University Lecturer in Palaeography and the Transmission of Classical Latin Texts. He was Sandars Reader in Bibliography at Cambridge University in 1959–1960, lecturing on manuscripts of the Latin classics in England in the medieval period. He was a member of the Lambeth Palace Library Committee for over 25 years from the early 1950s, and chaired the Manuscripts Sub-committee of the Standing Conference of National and University Libraries from 1957 until 1975. He served on the British Academy's Medieval Latin Dictionary Committee, and Medieval Texts Editorial Committee. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 1961. He retired in 1975.

Hunt's publications include (in addition to numerous articles):

A.J. Fairbank and R.W. Hunt eds., Humanistic script of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1960)

D. Callus and R.W. Hunt eds., Iohannes Blund: Tractatus de Anima (Oxford University Press, 1970)

R.W. Hunt and G.L. Bursill-Hall eds., The History of Grammar in the Middle Ages: Collected Papers (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1980)

R.W. Hunt and M. Gibson eds., The Schools and the Cloister: The Life and Writings of Alexander Nequam (1157-1217) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)