William Makepeace Thackeray

Tennyson was a friend from university, where Whewell was Thackeray’s rather distant tutor; Thackeray also met Goethe aged 19 or 20 on a journey to Weimar, though it’s unclear whether he made any impression on the old man. Leigh Hunt championed Thackeray’s work, while Eliot, Trollope and the Brownings were befriended as part of a London literary circle. Dickens had been a good friend, but they sustained a petty feud for years before being reconciled through a chance meeting on a London club doorstep . Vigny befriended Thackeray during a long stay in London. Carlyle described him as “of enormous appetite.”