On her travels, she met and befriended many leading European cultural figures of the day, and they feature prominently in her travel writings. With many of them she kept up a prolific correspondence. Among the European intellectuals she associated with were Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm Grimm, and the Swiss female writer Madame de Staël with whom she formed a close friendship.[3]