Théophile Gautier was one of the best known and most highly respected literary personalities in France in the nineteenth century. Among writers of the time, he counted as friends Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas père, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Charles Baudelaire, and, from his earliest school days in Paris, Gérard de Nerval. Gautier and the expatriate German poet Heinrich Heine saw one another regularly. The painter Eugène Delacroix appreciated Gautier's criticism, as did the composers Hector Berlioz and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Gautier and the critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve regarded one another fondly as fellow veterans of the Romantic struggles of the 1830s. Contemporary painters, sculptors, and playwrights courted Gautier as the newspaper reviewer in the best position to promote their works.

Gautier also enjoyed respect as a poet. Indeed, it was primarily his poetry that created...