Profession: novelist

Auden, initially strongly influential, was met at Oxford: Day-Lewis joined the circle around him, later modelling a fictional detective on him. Spender became another friend from the time (though it is a popular misconception that with MacNeice they formed a tight-knit group; the four were never in the same room all at the same time). Shortly before his fatal accident, Lawrence wrote praising his poetry. Day-Lewis’s friend Kavanagh told him he should have made more of his socialist convictions, Lehmann had a long affair with him, and his friend Amis gave him house-room in the months he was dying.

Bely was Boris Bugaev’s pen-name. Tsvetaeva, then an emergent writer, met him in the circle around the critic Voloshin. Ehrenburg, Mayakovsky, Mandelstam and Pasternak were others he hob-nobbed with; Pasternak said he hadn’t stretched his talent as much as he should have, but also acknowledged his influence. Bryusov co-edited a magazine with him, Bakst painted him. He had a close but stormy friendship with Blok, his fellow-follower of the esoteric philosopher Solovyov, having an affair with Blok’s wife, and duelling with him. Bely became a disciple of Steiner’s, working on his anthroposophical temple in Switzerland, before falling out with him.

Rilke, Rachmaninoff, Tolstoy, Blok and Bely were all visitors to his parents’ home. He became a great admirer of Rilke’s poetry, but was inspired by his neighbour Scriabin to study music. Tsvetayeva and he wrote to each other for 20 years before meeting (their triangular correspondence with Rilke is notable). His relationship with Mandelstam was complicated (despite what he said to Stalin, he had attended a reading satirising him). Spender and Pasternak were mutual admirers, Ehrenburg and Babel sat Pasternak down in a Paris café to rewrite his grumpy speech, and Akhmatova rejected his several offers of marriage.

Gide was a close friend of Louÿs from schooldays in Paris, though they eventually quarrelled. Louÿs met Leconte de Lisle at nineteen and Mallarmé at twenty, attending Mallarmé’s salon and later writing a sonnet for his 50th birthday. He visited London with Wilde when Wilde was putting on his play Salomé there, though again they later quarelled. Debussy was another good friend. The magazine Louÿs founded published early work by friends like Valéry and Gide, as well as by himself and established poets like Mallarmé. Valéry had first met Louÿs on military service in Montpellier, and spoke at his graveside.