The early period of Nekrasov's life in St. Petersburg - from the moment of his arrival in July 1838 - is among the least documented in his biography. We know about this period of his life mainly from his later memoirs, which are always not entirely accurate and contradictory, always shifting the chronology and portraying his hero from the outside - as an episodic person in random encounters. Autobiographical works in this regard are probably even less reliable: we never know where memory ends in them and artistic fiction begins. For all these circumstances, biographical evidence about the early Nekrasov, coming from his immediate environment, is not an entirely common phenomenon and very interesting for a biographer. Such materials include letters that served as the basis for this study. They belong to Claudius Andreevich Dannenberg, famous in the biography of Nekrasov, his short-term roommate and friend, who, as we will try to show further, was connected with him by deeper literary interests.