Profession: writer

Marivaux, one of the most influential 18th C French dramatists, is best known for his comedies (his use of language, disparaged by Voltaire and others, is now understood as both subtle and complex). Meeting Fontenelle was pivotal in his career. Maupertuis and Montesquieu were both friends, while Helvétius helped fund his work (he had lost his money in a bank-collapse). Garrick, on a visit to France, met him in his last year. Among salon acquaintances, Crébillon criticised his writing and Marmontel disliked his need for attention. Rousseau got the more experienced Marivaux to ‘retouch’ an immature play.

The work of Crébillon (not to be confused with his similarly-named father, also a noted writer) has been re-evaluated in recent times, and appreciated for its psychologcal insights, including into the relations of love and lust. His racy satires led to his imprisonment and banishment. Boucher, Rameau, Helvétius and Piron were all fellow-members of a well-known convivial singing-club. He was scathing about the literary style of his salon acquaintance Marivaux, and hatched a plan (unrealised) with his like-minded friend Sterne for a brochure where each would ridicule the other’s work, in order to whip up publicity.

A novelist and lively-minded intellectual, Edgeworth explored ideas of nationality, gender and education. Her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth was an influence, collaborator and interferer. His friend Day encouraged her autonomy, but nearly blinded her. She travelled extensively, particularly enjoying Prony’s and Cuvier’s conversation in Paris, and the company of Arago, Pictet, de Candolle, Dumont and the wild-haired Pestalozzi in Switzerland. Scott and Somerville were good friends (reading her work gave Scott fresh impetus with his own), while Herschel, Barbauld, Leadbeater and Brewster all corresponded. Darwin impressed her, Bentham and Ricardo admired her, Byron however was underwhelmed.

Musset’s literary reputation ebbs and flows. He started frequenting Nodier’s salon aged 17 or 18, getting to know its regulars Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Hugo and Lamartine; the first two especially became good friends. A regular visitor also to Hugo’s, (where he met Mérimée among others), he refused to adulate him, and remained strongly aware of the debt the writers in the Nodier/Hugo circle owed Nodier. Chopin and Murger were friends, he greatly liked Stendhal, and Delacroix dined regularly with him. He had an affair with Sand (whom he introduced to Liszt), ending when she fell for his doctor.

Pellico is best known for a poem, Francesca da Rimini, and for his influential account of his years as a political prisoner. Settled in Milan, he met Byron and Stendhal (who frequented the same literary salons as he did), Schlegel and de Staël; Byron and he each translated the other’s work, while Stendhal, fond of Pellico, later looked after the publishing of his friend’s prison memoirs. It has been speculated that the mysterious ‘Davis’ that Pellico recorded meeting was in fact the noted scientist Humphry Davy: no-one knows, but Pellico’s friendship with Davy’s equally celebrated colleague Volta shortens the odds.