Profession: writer

Turgenev spent much of his life outside Russia, many compatriots straining to forgive him. Tolstoy challenged him to a duel and didn’t speak for 17 years; Dostoyevsky lampooned him in print. During his years in France, he ate, drank and discussed life and literature monthly with Zola, Daudet, Goncourt and his very close friend Flaubert; he also met Maupassant, James, Sand and Mérimée. He visited England often, staying with Tennyson (shooting grouse) and Eliot, and meeting Carlyle, Brown and Thackeray. He was wildly ambivalent about Wagner; while Tchaikovsky, too embarrassed to meet, hid on a train to avoid him.

Sinclair’s densely woven stalking of London’s hidden currents and some of its more uncherished denizens led to a cult author becoming national best-seller. Ballard was both friend and mentor. Burroughs touched Sinclair by sending him a piece for a student magazine – they continued to correspond. Gibson – met at a talk – proclaimed him his favourite writer. Snyder was visited on an American road-trip. Petit was one of many collaborators and comrades-in-arms – they made a film about Whitehead (in which Acker appeared), rubbing him up the wrong way. Sinclair only once encountered W. G. Sebald; they did not speak.

Although Green’s novels are unfashionable, he has been called one of the most innovative and imaginative 20th-century writers in English. Orwell, Waugh and Powell were all met at school. Lewis was his tutor at Oxford, Green resenting the work expected of him as interfering with his cinema-going and flow of ideas. His good friend Isherwood described ‘Living’ as the best proletarian novel ever. Among his great admirers, Welty maintained a long correspondence, while Sarraute was sympathetic to his alcohol and writer’s block problems; Updike however never met him. Southern, an unlikely close friend, called him a writer’s writer’s writer.

Fielding (also a notable reforming magistrate) was central to the development of the novel as a literary form, and wrote the first comic novel in English. Richardson, his equally significant contemporary, was a literary rival and shamelessly parodied by Fielding, yet was warmly praised in a famous letter from him. Montagu, his cousin, was a friend and valued counsellor. The socially more outgoing Hogarth painted his portrait; precisely how well they knew each other is unclear (despite parallels in their work). Garrick, a close friend, acted in one of his plays, and appears to have done Fielding various professional favours.

Greene was one of the most significant British 20th C novelists and screenwriters. Waugh and he were Oxford fellow-students, though they only became friends as established novelists. Read, one of Greene’s heroes, invited him to dinner with the other, Eliot. Hemingway invited him for drinks in Cuba, Capote and Brook (separately) went to Haiti with him, and Škvorecky wrote him very long letters. He worked closely with Reed, liked Losey, and secretly wangled a bit-part in a film of his admirer Truffaut’s. He was convinced that Márquez, met at a Paris party, had phoned him anonymously to broker a political ransom.

Vidal, a notably acerbic commentator, is particularly respected for his essays, though his novels brought more attention. Earhart, close to his father, doted on him as a child. Among friends, he drank regularly with Auden, went walking with Nureyev, got a cameo role from Fellini, and was a close neighbour of Calvino. Kerouac and he enjoyed visits to the opera together, and had a brief fling; Nin (unreliable) also claimed to have been a lover. Garbo was also a friend, though Vidal said the relationship was unidirectional. He tried to persuade Sitwell that Capote (engaged in a famous spat) had written Lady Chatterley.

Mauriac’s novels, journalism, poetry and plays made him one of the most influential 20thC French writers. He and Perse met as aspiring writers in Bordeaux. Proust and Cocteau were met at Daudet’s widow’s salon, Mauriac celebrating the success of his first volume of poetry. He idolised Jammes, and supported the young Sollers. Claudel, Gide and Maritain all corresponded for decades, as did Paulhan, who became a real friend through their work for the Resistance (Greene, Buber, Sartre and Ponge were also correspondents). Mauriac knew Colette well, was close to Green, and persuaded Wiesel to write about his holocaust experiences.

La Rochefoucauld is known for his gently acerbic maxims, influential not only in France, but for example on the aphoristic philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He never considered himself a writer so much as a soldier – twice seriously injured in battle – and (benign) member of the nobility. A regular at the salons of his friends Mme de Sablé, Mme de Sévigné, and most particularly, Mme de La Fayette, with whom he had an intimate (though possibly chaste) relationship, he preferred the company of women to men, introduced La Fayette to Racine and Boileau, and knew La Fontaine.

As a young poet, Bose (also known as Buddhadeb Bosu) visited the nearly-80-year-old Tagore, then the towering influence on Bengali literature, and subsequently wrote on him. Tagore himself recognised that Bose represented a new generation in Bengali poetry. Das, slightly older than Bose, was one of many writers he helped get exposure through his influential literary journal and personal support. Bose, who taught widely in the U.S., visited Miller at home in Big Sur. Cummings was among his correspondents.