No writer is an island, all the greats had to contend with the same feelings we do : jealously and bitterness over their contemporaries’ successes, as well as support and camaraderie from their fellow writers who welcomed friendship and exchange. Many of the writer’s of the 19th and 20th century’s finest novels are indebted to the companions-in-writing, who would inspired and critique their work. And then there are some novelists who would never see eye to eye, and would rally vehemently against each other's work. Either way, these lively and sometimes tumultuous relationships make compelling read for us, giving us a peek behinds the scenes of genius, where authors reveal their foibles and vulnerabilities. 

Here we have rounded up some of the best literary friendships, and some of the most contentious. What do you think is the most notable writer rivalry? Did we include it here? Comment below!

Tolkein, left; Lewis, second right; at Oxford

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien 

Lewis and Tolkien met as faculty members at Oxford University. They were markedly different in both temperament and teaching styles. They came from different backgrounds and religious traditions. Initially, these differences caused a bit of friction. This would change when they came together over a shared interest in the Norse literary tradition. Tolkien had established a club called the “Coalbiters”, where they would read of discuss Norse texts. This esoteric interest would spark a friendship that would endure for the rest of their lives.

Soon Lewis and Tolkien began meeting together just the two of them to discuss their work and their writing processes. They were exchange and critique on each other drafts. This interchange would proof so successful that others were invited into the fold, eventually calling themselves The Inklings. They would meet like this for the next seventeen years.

Through this meaningful exchange of work came the most extraordinary and enriching friendship. Their impact on the literary output of the two authors is incalculable, and no one could deny that “meeting of minds” would have shaped the masterpieces they would go on to produce. 

Fitzgerald and Hemingway

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway 

These two greats of the Jazz Age had a friendship that was both supportive and toxic - or rather, things were great until they weren’t. The reality of their relationship is no big secret - anyone who has read Hemingway’s Paris memoir A Moveable Feast will recall the scathing way that he wrote about his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had joined Ernest on a thwarted road trip down to the Lyon in which Fitzgerald did not turn up for several days. Their time together was then was made increasingly miserable by Fitzgerald’s seriously unhinged drinking. Hemingway depicts him as a pathetic and needy character, a characterization no doubt inflated by Hemingway’s own inflated sense of self.

Both writers were part of the 1920s Paris Expat community, a grouping of artists and writers who enjoyed an unfettered, hedonistic lifestyle in the world’s most romantic and elegant capital. When they met in 1925, Fitzgerald had already published “The Great Gatsby”, and Hemingway was on his way to literary success but still a burgeoning full time author.  The next year he would publish The Sun Also Rises. There was a mutual exchange  - Hemingway heaped praise on Gatsby, calling it a “first-rate book”. Fitzgerald introduced Hemingway to his publisher, Scribner’s.

In terms of their writing, the two could not be more different. While Fitzgerald would labour over his careful, flowery prose, Hemingway appeared to effortlessly dash off masterpieces like “Farewell to Arms” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.

Their lifestyles were intertwined but remained as resolutely different as their literary styles. Fitzgerald was an incorrigible alcoholic, whose drunken exploits were an embarrassment to his friends. Hemingway perceived this as an intrinsic weakness, a sort of lack of masculine fortitude which he was so fond of. But it wasn’t like Hemingway was a pillar of morality. Whilst Fitzgerald would remain faithful to Zelda, through numerous breakdowns and disasters, Hemingway would divorce three women over the course of his life, Fitzgerald even saying that Hemingway “needed a new woman for each big book”, postulating that Hemingway needed the emotional tumult to write his great novels. And the timeline does add up. They would trade cruel barbs as well as friendly overtures over the next few years, both in published writing and in letters. Yet, in 1927 Hemingway would write to his friend and call him “ You are the best damn friend I have.” It would seem that both authors fed off the toxic companionship each one offered, the 20th centuries’ greatest “frenemies”.  

Left: Melville, Right: Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville 

These two authors enjoyed a close friendship in both a literary and literal sense - they lived close by to each other in Massachusetts for a crucial year in Melville’s life while he was writing Moby Dick. Their companionship involved deep conversations on all the important stuff. 

Melville was instantly impressed by Hawthorne when he met him in the summer of 1850. Hawthorne was fifteen years Melville’s senior. It was clear that they were kindred spirits straight away. They both had huge literary ambitions, to write works that would put American literature on equal footing with Britain. Aside from literature, their backgrounds were aligned as well : both came from Calvinist seafaring families, who had established their reputations in the Revolutionary war. 

It is likely that Melville looked up to the older Hawthorne, a more established man and writer. In him, Melville saw an actualised version of the writer he wanted to become. Moby Dick was almost finished when he met Hawthorne, but after reading the latter’s work he decided to spend another eight months revising it. 

Despite their fondness for each and the mutual respect fostered, this friendship was to be a short lived one.  Hawthorne left the Berkshires in 1801, an event which distressed Melville greatly. Melville’s account of reuniting with Hawthorne after several years later is distant and ambivalent in tone in comparison to the lavishing of praise he used to bestow on him in his letters.

What has survived of this friendship is telling as well - many letters from Melville to Hawthorne are still in existence, whereas Meville scrupulously destroyed most of the letters he received from Hawthorne.

Not all friendships have longevity, but this shortness in this one in outmatched by the literary inspiration it fostered between these two men in this short period of time.

Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster 

Some authors live in content seclusion, where they create their literary worlds out of thin air. Others surround themselves with inspiration in the form of companions and hangers-on. Certainly in the Bloomsbury Group epitomised this. Virginia Woolf and her husband Lytton Strachey, presided over a mixed bag of writers, poets, artists and publishers. Woolf had many productive and wonderful relationships with fellow authors. One of the most impressionable was that with E.M Forster, the author of A Passage to India and Howard’s End. 

Woolf and Forster met through their mutuals in the bohemian literary circles of Edwardian London. Unlike some of the tumultuous and rocky relationships on this list, this friendship was marked by respect and admiration for each other’s work. By the 1920s, both were established authors who were properly coming into their own. Woolf would publish “Mrs Dalloway," and Forster, “A Passage to India". Both swept up immense critical acclaim. As the years progressed, they maintained a steady correspondence.

The bohemian nature of the Bloomsbury group meant that the lines between friends, colleagues and lovers was nebulous and always changing. Her relationship with Forster did not stray into this kind of territory, but remained congenial and platonic. Forster himself was only ever a fringe member of the Bloomsbury Group. Perhaps this drew Woolf to his outsider character, whom she described as a “butterfly”, with a lovely capacity for “silliness”. Forster was a little less whimsical in his descriptions of their friendships saying that “she was always very sweet to me, but I don’t think she was particularly fond of me”. This characterisation of a friendship, one party mercurial and delicate in temperate, the other a little forceful, a little “too much”, is not unusual. 

Forster would outlive his contemporary by two decades, and he never forgot the impact Woolf’s work had had on his own. He often spoke of the legacy she had left behind, and how his works were undoubtably influenced by the themes and ideas which they exchanged. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau 

Friendships between different generations often offer more than just companionship, but often provides the opportunity for mentorship. One of the most famous mentor-mentee relationships in literature is between than of Emerson and Thoreau.

The two met in 1837. Thoreau had just graduated from Harvard, while Emerson was an established speaker and essayist.  Emerson at once is supportive of Thoreau’s literary ambitions. He joins Emerson’s literary circle and even moves into his home in Concord, where he pays his way doing handyman tasks and tutoring Emerson’s children. Thoreau is all the while soaking in the wealth of experience and knowledge from his mentor, becoming absorbed in his Transcendentalist ideas. 

Emerson played a role in the most pivotal decision that Thoreau would make in his literary career - living in seclusion at Walden Pond, land that was owned by Emerson. Despite his relative isolation from the world, they still enjoyed a lively exchange. And of course, this experience would form the basis on Thoreau’s masterpiece, Walden. Following his sojourn, they continued to meet,  walking and eating together often. 

But this was not a totally one-sided relationship. The older Emerson benefited enormously from Thoreau’s input. Thoreau was an independent thinker and not afraid of radical ideas. This influenced Emerson greatly. Even when their politics diverged, you can imagine that every disagreement or conflict this caused between them gave him food for thought. And ultimately, they bonded over shared values : self-reliance, individual conscience and a meaningful connection to nature. 

Both men wrote diaries that add up to millions of words, so there is little ambiguity in how they felt about each, or about friendship in general.  Thoreau wrote, “Nothing makes the earth so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”

Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Many of the friendships on this list are well-documented, but this is one of the lesser known friendships of two writers who made very different marks on literature. One is a Pulitzer-prize winning poet, whose name is among the great American poets of the 20th century. The other is an artist, dancer and writer who was eclipsed by her husband’s fame, but is more than a mere footnote.

Like all the promising young writers of the 1920s, Millay and Fitzgerald were contemporaries in the New York and Paris artistic and literary circles. Zelda, from a wealthy family in Saint Louis, married F Scott and left behind her socialite life for a more bohemian lifestyle right at the very apex of the Jazz heart.  Millay was already living in New York, already a literary sensation, a strident feminist who lived by her progressive ideals and enjoyed her free and easy independence. With mutual friends, the two talented women were naturally drawn to each other and enjoyed a supportive friendship. They shared their work with each other and spoke highly the other’s output.

Zelda’s life was fraught with mental illness and no amount of friendship from loving friends could save her from that. Millay’s life wasn’t a bed of roses either. Their friendship was a brief, heady spark of joy from a different time. 

Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray 

These two literary giants took their rivalry to the public sphere, a sometimes bitter feud that made front page news. Like most rivalries, this one was a power struggle - who deserved to be called the permanent British author. By the time Thackeray published him masterpiece, Vanity Fair, Dickens had been a published author for more than a decade. However it wasn’t until Thackeray published his second novel, Pendennis, that he entered Dicken’s orbit. The reviews were quick to draw comparisons with David Copperfield, which happened to be published at the same time. Dickens proved to be more of a commercial success, but Thackeray received the critic’s approval. This newcomer could prove to be a real competitor to Dickens, who had until recently took most of the accolades.

Despite sharing the same profession, their perceived differences no doubt fuelled their rancour. Social class, even more important than in today’s society, would have played a role in this. Thackeray came from a middle-class background whilst Dickens had come out of severe poverty. This was a point of pride for Dickens’ who had made his own way in life and could write honestly about the plight of the working class. 

Their feuding would get person as well - when Dickens separated from his wife in 1858, Thackeray wasted little time spreading rumours about Dickens’ alleged affair.  Evidently he found his writing unimpeachable and had to resort to pettiness. In retaliation, Dickens’ had a young  journalist write a scathing attack on Thackeray in his journal, Household Words. Thackeray’s attempts to remove the young man from their mutual club, the Garrick was met by opposition from Dickens’, to no avail. 

While the details are a little murky, it would appear that the two men had made amends at the time of Thackeray’s death, with Dickens’ saying “ We had our differences of opinion…but, when we fell upon these topics, it was never very gravely, and I have a lively image of him in my mind, twisting both his hands in his hair, and stamping about, laughing, to make an end of the discussion.’

Percey Bysshe Shelley and John Keats 

Just as history can sometimes embellish rivalries, it can also club together writers similarity in work makes it feel inevitable that they would be friends. But of course, that is not always exactly the case. One such example is two of the greatest Romantic poets, Percy Shelley and John Keats.

The two met at poet Leigh Hunt’s home in 1816. After spending some time together, friend and poet Leigh Hunt remarked: “ Keats did not take to Shelley as kindly as Shelley did to him." This mutual dislike appears manifested in a disapproval of each other’s work, sending each other snide criticism when the each in turn published poetry. 

The two men similar outlooks and values in some respects, but it resulted in very different poetry. Shelley was politically progressive, with strong ideals on religion, science and politics. His poetry spoke earnestly of these values and his sincere wishes for a better world. Keats did not write with such designs in mind.  He wrote with vivid and descriptive imagery, odes to beauty and gothic tales of female vampires. Shelley had aristocratic origins, while Keats hated such class distinctions, and had originally trained as an apothecary. Shelley lived a fairly wild and bohemian existence and Keats a more retiring, conventional one.

However, any pettiness did not last when Keats was taken seriously ill with consumption in 1820. Shelley offered him a place to stay in Italy to recover. When he died a year later, Shelley wrote “Adonais”, an elegy that did wonders for his posthumous reputation. Shelley was die himself just a year later from drowning, a book of Keats found in his pocket.

Robert Frost and Amy Lowell

Frost and Lowell could be characterized as friends who enjoyed and thrived on a lively and intense literary debate, and theirs would be a “frenemy-ship” that would endure for many decades.

The two were introduced through the Modernist poet, Ezra Pound. Whilst visiting him in Europe in 1915, Lowell stumbled across Frost’s North of Boston. She enjoyed it immensely and reviewed it for the New Republic. Frost was equally delighted with her glowing review, and the two met soon after.  Lowell would later say that “…at once began a friendship, which on my part, has been an ever-increasing admiration of his work, and a pro-found attachment to the man."

Lowell cut an incongruous figure, out of step with the social mores of her society and time. She was an imposing and formidable woman. She and Frost bonded over the poet’s plight — lack of recognition and adequate renumeration. Lowell admired the realism in his poetry and his artistic independence, and Frost basked in her acclaim and support  But their relationship could be fraught as well. They came from different backgrounds that affected how they perceived each other. Lowell was born into a social milieu which made her entry into literary society seem effortless, whereas Frost toiled away as a schoolteacher for twenty years before getting his footing. Lowell was prone to mischaracterizing his descriptions of New England. She was not from the area and this showed in her attempts to understand the deep geographical roots of Frost’s work. Some of Lowell’s later descriptions of his wife also hit a little too close to home. While Frost remained cordial, he was upset by how Lowell had portrayed her.  Towards the end of Lowell’s life, these slights accumulated. Frost was not able to attend a commemorative dinner held in her honour - possibly due to family commitments, but maybe also because Lowell had apparently sent Frost instructions on what to say in his speech about her. 

This friendship seemed to falter when Lowell’s critical eye displeased Frost, who at points called her a “fake” and a “fraud” and several other choice words. However, he could not deny the effect her influence had had on his career as a poet, writing in a tribute to her, saying she "helped to make it stirring times for a decade to those immediately concerned with art and to many not so immediately".

Friendship can fuel creativity and also be a thorn in its side. These literary friendships, intense and fraught, joyous and painful, show the debt that these writers owed each other.

Which friendship between these authors resonated with you? Comment below!