Though remembered today as a great diarist, a man who kept copiously detailed records of how he mediated, with skill and tact, between warring parties, Henry Crabb Robinson contributed generously to the developing careers of major literary and political figures for a full seven decades. He helped Mme. de Stael understand better the writings of German philosophers; served as foreign editor of The Times, and wrote accurate, useful despatches from Spain during the Peninsular War; was a founding father of both the Athenaeum Club and University College, London; and assisted biographers of Goethe and Blake, among others, by contributing invaluable personal information. He was a good friend of Lamb, Coleridge, Southey, and any number of writers who, he believed, contributed to the cultural improvement of what, for want of a better phrase, may be called the English sense of good taste.