W. H. Auden

Isherwood (first met at at school, when Auden was eleven) was a long-time friend and collaborator, and his lover when they emigrated to the U.S. MacNeice and Eliot helped him get work published; Spender, Day-Lewis, Ashbery and Schuyler were among other poet friends. Britten, Bowles, McCullers, Mann (and Gipsy Rose Lee) were all co-tenants with Auden of a house in Brooklyn, and Arendt (who took his photo) part of a wider circle of friends. He wrote or co-wrote libretti for Stravinsky, Britten and Henze, and corresponded at length with Tolkien.