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

On reading the title, my first thought was Roadl Dahl, so not quite as highbrow as some of the names above.

The reason was because he was one of the biggest authors when I was young, apart from Enid Blyton but her books seemed more dated (although good).

I remember when I was around eight that I found out that he was still very much alive - for some reason this blew my mind away - I guess that I assumed someone so popular would be dead.

Interesting thread! I'd have loved to have met Shakespeare - I imagine he was incredibly witty and likely a very entertaining man.

Other than him, my wish list is far more modern and definitely less "great" - but it would mean a lot to me!

Douglas Adams, Dean Koontz, RL Steine, Jilly Cooper (with her I genuinely would love to see what she's really like with how most of her RCB books are written), Sidney Sheldon, Jackie Collins, John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell off the top of my head were my lifelines growing up so would love to thank them! Hesitantly I'd like to meet Stephen King too - I enjoyed a number of his books but I'm not sure about him as a person. I've recently discovered Lisa Jewell so would be nice to meet her too lol!

I'd love to meet Dorothy L. Sayers.
Her use of English is inimitable.
She sounds humorous and clever.

People argue about whether CB and CD actually ever met, though — there’s only one reference to them ever meeting, and at second hand. (And it’s possible Emily destroyed her own MS, if it ever existed…)

I had lunch with Bernardine Evaristo yesterday, and she was excellent company. Clever, confident, funny.

I’m sure Douglas Adams was good company. Funny, cheerful enthusiastic and curious.

It would have interesting to sit in the famous Oxford pub where Tolkien and C S Lewis met and listen to their conversation.

I know I wouldn’t have liked Harold Bloom, but I’d definitely have enjoyed picking his brains.

I'll have to disagree about Dickens. Yes he was on the side of social reform, very indignant about the way poor people were treated at the time, workhouses etc, and obviously that's good.

But at the same time he was an absolute bastard to his poor wife Catherine who had given birth to his 9 (?) children, totally humiliated her because he was bored with her and he was beginning an affair with Ellen Ternan, (who was young enough to be his daughter). He let it be publicly known that in his opinion everything was Catherine's fault, she was an unfit mother etc. He managed to succeed in estranging most of the children from her.

And all the time he carefully kept his relationship with Ellen T secret from society. When you think of how he created female characters who could not stand the shame of being 'fallen women', and ended up killing themselves because of it (eg the character Martha in David Copperfield, Lady Dedlock in Bleak House etc) - sex outside marriage was a fate worse than death! - the male 'seducers' are blackhearted scoundrels! etc. When all the time his own young mistress is tucked away in a cottage and the relationship went on for years. Total bloody hypocritic!

He was unfeeling to his children as well - one son didn't do well at school - he shipped him off to Australia in his teens for a fresh start and never saw him again.

He was really quite a sanctimonious moraliser in the books and a lot of his characters are just caricatures. Especially women, he didn't understand women at all. Plus some antisemitism (Fagin in Oliver Twist.)

So no, I don't think most women on here would have enjoyed meeting him in reality. He probably wouldn't have been bothered to talk to most of us anyway, unless you happen to be quite young and pretty. The sort of man that is torn to shreds in the Relationships section, and suggestions given on how to Leave The Bastard.

I can appreciate a lot of his writing, a very talented entertainer but a failure of a human being.

Yes, undoubtedly Dickens behaved inexcusably badly to his poor wife and did indeed explore the possibility of declaring her of unsound mind when he was first in thrall to Ellen Ternan. After nine children and a few miscarriages as well.

He pretty much invented the Streisand Effect by insisting on publishing a very unwise statement indignantly denying that a certain ’young person’ of his acquaintance (Ternan, duh) had any sort of improper relationship with him, thereby ensuring that vastly more people got to hear about the scandal than they would otherwise. He was weirdly naive in many ways.

And yet….he still was a brilliant writer, in my view. You can be a total bastard as well, as many others have proved. I do find him a bundle of fascinating contradictions - a deeply controlling person, haunted by demons - and I’d still have loved to meet him. Would I like him? Maybe not, but plenty of people attested to his charm (though I guess those people weren’t married to him or happened to be one of his sons).

I'd like to have met Louisa May Alcott and sisters , but I have been to their house which does give you a glimpse of what she may have been like and some context.