Profession: writer

Spending several months in Germany learning the language, Lewis briefly met Goethe and Wieland in Weimar. Scott seems to have admired his poetry — Lewis also showed him his translation of a story by Goethe — while finding him “a bore of the first description”. Byron invited him (along with several other cronies) to stay with him on Lake Geneva, where he also met the Shelleys — though he was not present the famous evening that ‘Frankenstein’ was born.

She was dedicated to her mother Wollstonecraft’s memory, while she and her father Godwin shared ideas and mutual support. She grew up in an intellectual hot-house, in the regular company of the likes of Coleridge, Hazlitt and Lamb, the experimenters Davy and Nicholson, and above all Byron and Leigh Hunt (with whose family she later lived for a year in Italy). Peacock was a frequent visitor after she absconded with her father’s protégé Percy Shelley. She revealed to Scott that she was the real author of ‘Frankenstein.’ Mérimée (a lasting friend) and she flirted, with Irving and Procter other suitors during her widowhood.

Dickens carried out a warm correspondence with Irving, stayed with him in Tarrytown, and acknowledged his influence on his own writing. Scott, Irving’s idol (they shared a talent for dramatising history), became a friend for life, as also did Longfellow, who wrote how Irving put everyone at their ease. Irving encouraged Hawthorne, warmly welcomed Audubon, and studied alongside Allston in Rome. Poe rather cynically got his endorsement, while Cooper acted in rivalry. A mutual friend (whose own offer she’d already rejected) tried to get Shelley and Irving to marry: it’s unclear whether either was actually attracted to the other.

Goldsmith corrected proofs for Richardson, while still trying to make a living as a doctor. He was elected to Johnson’s literary club, where Reynolds, Boswell and Garrick were among fellow-members; Johnson at least once saved the famously chaotic Goldsmith’s bacon, allegedly selling a manuscript that went on to be a hit. He first met Boswell in a bookshop, was visited and painted by Hogarth, wrote for Smollett’s review, and alternately charmed and tested the patience of most of his friends; Reynolds, the closest, allowed that many found it hard to believe that he was the author of his own works.