Valentine's Day is approaching, and let's be honest, a solitary life of the mind can get a little lonely come February. Even the most reclusive of writers deserve love, and many have found it! Here is a list of our favorite ten literary power couples.
Now, a word of warning, by “power couples” we are not suggesting that all these relationships were successful, or healthy, or even a good idea to begin with (we’re looking at you Sylvia & Ted!) writers are a fickle and dramatic bunch after all.
Rather, our power couples are two highly talented individuals who found comfort and love with one another, even if only for a moment before the petty literary drama ensued.
Mary Shelley & Percy Bysshe Shelley
He was one of the most well-known Romantic poets of his day, she would write the world’s first science fiction novel, together it’s hard to beat these two for literary influence and plot-worthy dramatics. From consummating their relationship on her mother’s grave, to running away together (even though he was already married), to Percy dying at sea and Mary getting into a feud with his friends over who got to keep his literal, actual heart, nobody could write and love quite like these two.
George Eliot (Mary Evans) & George Henry Lewes
Charles Dickens may have referred to them as “the ugliest couple in London” (ouch) but the pair more than made up for it in their creative pursuits and total devotion to one another. Although they never married (George Henry Lewes was already married and unable to get a divorce) they did live together openly, causing quite a scandal. George Henry Lewes, although largely forgotten today, was an esteemed philosopher and essayist, who encouraged Mary to write. Without their happy, supportive relationship, we may never have gotten Middlemarch.
Mary Wollstonecraft & William Godwin
While today, their most famous creation would undoubtedly be their daughter Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin were literary heavyweights of their own. She wrote the pioneering feminist tract A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, he was the author of the radical Political Justice. Both were extremely against the institution of marriage and caused a scandal when they…got married. The things we do for love!
Simone de Beauvoir & Jean-Paul Sartre
These two philosophical powerhouses changed the world of books forever with texts like The Woman Destroyed and Being and Nothingness respectively. They also maintained a loving, if unconventional, partnership. The pair would remain close through multiple affairs, often sharing affair partners, and were undoubtedly intellectually well-suited. While the latter half of their relationship was non-sexual and comprised mostly of affairs with others, they seemed to take great pleasure in sharing all the details with one another. Ah, the French!
Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes
If the idea of two dreamy and wildly talented poets meeting at a party at Cambridge sounds too good to be true...you would be right. Since her tragic suicide at the age of thirty, more information has come out about the author of The Bell Jar’s life, and the profoundly toxic relationship she had with her husband. Ted Hughes may have been one of the best poets of his generation, but he was also a philanderer and abusive to Plath. Thankfully, Sylvia seems to have gotten the last word in terms of literary renown.
F. Scott Fitzgerald & Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald
Speaking of turbulent relationships…This wild partying, heavy-drinking duo is responsible for some of the most famous American novels of all time. While F. Scott is known for books such as The Great Gatsby, Zelda deserves some credit considering her husband frequently lifted passages from her diary to put in his novels and was considering titling Gatsby Trimalchio in West Egg before she intervened. Zelda later published a memoir about their life together (Save Me the Waltz), although F. Scott forced her to re-write it so he could use similar material in Tender Is The Night.
Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller
While both Nin and Miller were married when they met in Paris in 1932, it didn’t stop the two writers from beginning a decades-long affair. Honestly, it is almost predictable considering how openly each wrote about sex at a time when it was scandalous to do so. The Delta of Venus author and the Tropic of Cancer author would exchange steamy letters for years, with Nin at one point even having a frank discussion about their affair with Miller’s wife Jane.
Allen Ginsburg & Peter Orlovsky
While Howl might have seen the best minds of its generation destroyed by drugs, sex, and debauchery, the real-life love story of Allen Ginsburg and Peter Orlovsky was relatively tame. These pillars of the Beat Poets scene met in San Francisco in 1955 and would remain together until Ginsberg died in 1997. A love for the ages, Ginsberg encouraged Orlovsky to start writing and publishing his work.
Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne
These literary powerhouses met in 1964 and remained married for 40 years, reading, writing, and editing one another’s work for decades. While Didion is undoubtedly better known with works like Play it As it Lays and Slouching Toward Bethlehem, the pair collaborated on the screenplay of A Star is Born, and Dunne was just as much responsible for defining and documenting the LA-artists scene of the 60s & 70s as his wife.
Zadie Smith & Nick Laird
If the idea of two dreamy and wildly talented writers meeting at Cambridge sounds too good to be true...you would be WRONG! Nature demands a balance and perhaps as an antidote for #5 we have the brilliant, the beautiful, the happily-married-with-two-kids Zadie Smith and Nick Laird. While Smith is without a doubt the literary superstar of the pairing with White Teeth (which Laird edited) and On Beauty (which is dedicated to him), Laird is an award-winning poet in his own right and has written two novels. Love and literature truly can conquer all.
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