Which of the great writers would you like to have met?

[Dappy777]

Do you ever read a book and wish you could have met the author? Or do you ever read a book and know you would have hated them? It's interesting the way an author's personality can seep into the writing. I know very little about Joseph Conrad, for example, but I can sense his depression. Same goes for Philip Larkin.

1. Writers I know I would have liked:

Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens, P. G. Wodehouse, Patrick Fermor, John Betjeman, Henry Fielding, Douglas Adams, Hilary Mantel, Kurt Vonnegut, Hermann Hesse

2. Writers I'm not sure about

The Brontes, Thomas Hardy, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Ted Hughes, Tolstoy, Anita Brookner, Tolkien, Anthony Burgess, Philip Larkin,

3. Writers I know I would have hated

Bukowski, Hemingway, Philip Roth, Evelyn Waugh

I always feel a bit sorry for Evelyn Waugh.

I love Waugh as a writer. As a human being, he seems to have been unbearable!

I'd have liked to have met PG Wodehouse, Seamus Heaney, Edith Wharton, Daphne du Maurier, Muriel Spark, Dorothy Parker, Terry Pratchett, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and Jessica Mitford (I'm not so sure about Nancy. Apparently she had a cruel tongue in her head and a close relationship with none other than Evelyn Waugh.) I'd also like to break bread with Karl Marx; he was clever and could be very funny, but his dinner companions soon learned to come with enough money to cover his share. He was always short of the ready. It would have been fun to have had Agatha Christie along too. I wonder what those two would have made of each other?

I would have loved to have talked with Robertson Davies.

I'd pick a writer with a sense of humor.

I've daydreamed about going back in time to tell Jane Austen how her work would endure, how widely read she would be.

I would dearly love to have met Dickens because he fascinates me, flawed though he was as a person.

If I can have Samuel Pepys as a writer, I’ll add him like a shot (but see: flawed etc)

I'm afraid Charlotte Brontë, much as I love her, would probably have been quite hard work. But Austen much more indiscreet and fun.

(@Tortielady the letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh are hilariously funny - they were great friends I think, and understood each other well. Definitely worth reading)

I met Hilary Mantel a couple of times and didn’t take to her, though I think she’s an astonishing novelist. And I met Ted Hughes not long before his death. All he talked about was fishing. A friend knew Patrick Fermor quite well in his later years, though mostly his impression of him was bafflement that anyone could be so fit and smoke 80 cigarettes a day.

I’d like to have met Charlotte Bronte, though I suspect she’d have been a dreadful combination of shy and self-righteous. And Virginia Woolf. Elizabeth Bowen.

It’s so funny to see this question - I was recently hit by the realisation that I’ll never meet any of the people whose imagination I’ve spent so much time with. My favourite writers seem more real to me than the people I know, in some ways, because they ‘let you in’. I had a few minutes feeling sad that I’d never meet PG Wodehouse or Dickens

Anyway…I’d have

Loved: Jane Austen, PG Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, James Joyce, George Orwell, RCC Sherriff, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Shirley Jackson, Sue Townsend, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons, Seamus Heaney, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare..

Been Intrigued By: Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Daphne du Maurier, Hilary Mantel, Emily Brontë, John Keats, Mary Shelley, John Clare, Ronald Dahl, Philip Larkin, Edgar Allen Poe, Ted Hughes.

Disliked: Enid Blyton, Nancy Mitford, Martin Amis, William Golding.

And to lower the tone:

Shag: Ted Hughes
Marry: Douglas Adams
Avoid: Martin Amis.

*Roald

Keats without a doubt. And Shakespeare.
If I could get Keats a TB shot while I was at it I'd love to see what he could have done with a much longer life.

I would like to have met Helen Forrester, from reading her books I can’t see how her siblings all survived such poverty. I’d also like to have the opportunity to slap her parents for their stupidity and selfishness.

James Joyce, to see if he spoke in breathy broken sentences and disorganised syntax like he writes 😂
Charlotte Bronte to see what really happened in Jane Eyre
George Elliot - to ask how she got started

But really I'd love to meet Stephen King (used to be Neil Gaiman too but I'll pass now!). His mind fascinates me.

I met Anne Tyler at a literary festival and she was lovely.
Would love to have met John Steinbeck!

Oh, if we’re talking ‘21st c medical interventions that could have prolonged lives and meant we had more work by beloved writers’, I have a list as long as my arm! Actually TB treatment alone would save quite a few, not just Keats — more work from Emily and Anne Bronte, Chekhov, Kafka, Katherine Mansfield for a start.

And yes, proper diagnosis and treatment for Austen’s possible Addison’s disease/leukaemia/whatever. And better MH support for Plath, and hyperemesis gravidarium treatment for Charlotte Bronte. Or for Mrs Gaskell to have visited and induced a miscarriage, as she said she’d have tried in a letter somewhere if she’d known CB was so ill.

I think Pepys counts as a writer and he'd probably be a hoot as a dining companion. But his sense of boundaries and his moral compass were non-existent, so I'd want other company able and willing to slap him back in his place. From what Robert Harris's Imperium has taught me about Cicero, he'd be a handy person to have around, as would Terentia, Cicero's formidable wife.

I had the same thought you did about Charlotte Bronte. She's a wonderful storyteller, but she was reputed to be a prig.

And Mitford and Waugh's book of letters is already on my TBR list - it's nice to have it confirmed that it's worth the time and money.

How do you mean, what really happened in Jane Eyre, @GingerLiberalFeminist ?

WLTM: George Orwell (another whose talent was tragically cut short by TB). Oscar Wilde. JG Ballard - fascinating life and incredible mind, and seemed like a good sort.

Met Hilary Mantel once. She was charming and gracious.

Philip Larkin comes across in Martin Amis’ autobiography as much less churlish than his reputation. But perhaps that was saved for his close friends and family.

I love Patrick Leigh Fermor’s writing, might quickly have tired of the womanising in real life but he definitely would have had brilliant stories to tell.

I love Orwell’s essays, and would include them among my all-time favourite books (his essay on Dickens is a masterpiece), but suspect he was unpleasant company. He disliked women and had a streak of sexual sadism, which comes through strongly in the novels.

Tolstoy was, apparently, an overbearing bully. And Hemingway was a bully and a braggart. Two big no nos. I don’t think I’d have liked Byron, Milton or J R R Tolkien either.

Robert Graves was a hero until I saw him interviewed and found him rude and unpleasant. Actually I admire all those First World War poets. I’d love to have met Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

I wonder what Blake was like in person. From what I’ve read he seems to have been very kind and gentle, not at all the crazy visionary.

I admire Sylvia Plath, but I don’t think I’d have liked her. She was intimidatingly clever, and also impatient with mediocre people like me. Ted Hughes was quite a shy, soft spoken man, so it would have been interesting to meet them when they first married and observe the dynamics.

I suspect Chaucer was good company - broad-minded and ironic. Same goes for Henry Fielding. I’d be amazed if Dickens turned out to be an arseh*le. The mind behind the novels feels so humane and good.

Virginia Woolf was probably polite but in a cold, aloof, slightly mocking way.

I think I’d have liked Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford and E M Forster. And I’m sure I’d have liked Kurt Vonnegut and Borges.

Proust was a brilliant conversationalist, apparently. And so, of course, was Oscar Wilde. I’d love to have met Wilde. Those who knew him all said he was immensely kind.

I bet Jane Austen was great company - urbane and funny and gossipy (but not bitchy or cruel).

I’d love to have met Bertrand Russell, who comes across as immensely kind and funny in his essays. P. G. Wodehouse was a sweetheart for sure, and so was John Betjeman.

Larkin has a bad reputation, but there is immense tenderness and sympathy behind a lot of his poems. He was grouchy and snobby and depressed, but probably good company after a drink or two.

I think I’d have liked WH Auden. Tennyson was said to be gloomy and up his own backside. I like Shelley’s poems, but in person i think I’d have preferred Keats.

I'm not sure I'd want to meet any writers, we probably see the best of them in their books and they'll either be terrible shy or dreadful in real life.

Well, did she marry him and impart suffering, or was she really fool enough to marry a man who kept his desperately ill wife a secret?

• imagine what MN would say if someone posted;

I'm a nanny with a wealthy family and I've entered into a relationship with the man, who I believed to be single. But I've just found out I'm the OW, and his wife is actually very ill. What should I do?!

Or

Years ago I fell in love with a man but it turned out I was the Ow. I left him, built my own business and owned my own property. Then this man suffered a huge tragedy and his wife is dead. Should I go for it?

I’d definitely like to have met Dr Johnson. Pepys seems to have been very likeable - cheerful and endlessly curious. But he was an abuser and sexual predator (though pretty normal by the standards of his day).

D H Lawrence seems unbearable when you read his books. But those who knew him said he was mesmerising when in the right mood.

I’d like to have met the 19th-century aesthetes. It would have been great to sit round a dinner table and listen to Walter Pater, John Ruskin, Oscar Wilde, Swinburne, etc, discuss art.

Aldous Huxley does dialogue brilliantly. If he talked half as well as he writes he must have been a brilliant conversationalist.

I’d be amazed if Dickens turned out to be an arsehle. The mind behind the novels feels so humane and good.

Not forgetting the social causes he championed. He really used his influence for good.

Incidentally, Charlotte Bronte admired his work greatly and was keen to meet him. The meeting apparently did not go well! I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall, there. I agree she comes across as a prig, although she was probably shaped grestly by their upbringing and a sense of responsibility for the family. As much as I love Jane Eyre, I'll never forgive CB for destroying the manuscript of Emily's finished but unpublished book upon her untimely death. Imagine what that could have been?! CB claimed it was to protect her memory and reputation after the mauling Wuthering Heights got for being deemed unsuitable reading for women (by men).

I'd like to go on a pub crawl with Pepys and I reckon Wilkie Collins might have been interesting too.

Dickens treated his wife pretty badly iirc. He tried to have her committed to an asylum so he could run off with his young lover.

When I read these books when I was younger HF mother's behaviour took my breath away sometimes. But re reading (many times) as I got older it's obvious that she had severe mental health problems, post natal depression maybe.

They were obviously wealthy middle class people stuck in a world that was not suited to help their own when they slipped out of the thin strata of society they lived in. Hide bound by snobbishness and narrow minded society.

Nonetheless it's the children that suffered and you easily feel for.

A lot of authors I can imagine would be quite intimidating and probably not easy sociable people.

I'd have liked to have known or been in the writing group of the women in Can Any Mother Help Me? (By Jenna Bailey)

I've got an audio book of bbc archive interviews of various people, famous and not, from the 20th Century and there's a bit about Wilfred Owen with his younger brother. Harold(?) He says that he was always amazed by the great humanity in his poetry, because he, Wilfred, was so entirely preoccupied by his own pursuits, his books etc. Harold caveats this by saying "I say this with great love"

It's certainly interesting how our perception of people through their writing may or may not be accurate to them in reality!

pmk as I want to think more about this.

Austen obv.
Brontes to really understand the dynamnic
Heyer cos I love her novels

Rowling cos she's awesome

Or both! 😬