pg169-171, Kanigel's 1991 The Man Who Knew Infinity:

It wasn't the first time a letter had launched the career of a famous mathematician. Indeed, as the mathematician Louis J. Mordell would later insist, "It is really an easy matter for anyone who has done brilliant mathematical work to bring himself to the attention of the mathematical world, no matter how obscure or unknown he is or how insignificant a position he occupies. All he need do is to send an account of his results to a leading authority," as Jacobi had in writing Legendre on elliptic functions, or as Hermite had in writing Jacobi on number theory.

And yet, if Mordell was right-if "it is really an easy matter" - why had Gauss spurned Abel? Carl Friedrich Gauss was the premier mathematician of his time, and, perhaps, of all time. The Norwegian Niels Henrik Abel, just twenty-two at the time he wrote Gauss, had proved that some equations of the fifth degree (like x^5 + 3x^4 + ... = 0) could never be solved algebraically. That was a real coup, especially since leading mathematicians had for years sought a general solution that, Abel now showed, didn't exist. Yet when he sent his proof to Gauss, the man history records as "the Prince of Mathematics" tossed it aside without reading it. "Here," one account has him saying, dismissing Abel's paper as the work of a crank, "is another of those monstrosities."

. Then, too, if "it is really an easy matter," why had Ramanujan's brilliance failed to cast an equal spell on Baker and Hobson, the other two Cambridge mathematicians to whom he had written?...The other Cambridge mathematician, a Senior Wrangler, was E. W. Hobson, who was in his late fifties when he heard from Ramanujan and more eminent even than Baker. His high forehead, prominent mustache, and striking eyes helped make him, in Hardy's words, "a distinguished and conspicuous figure" around Cambridge. But he was remembered, too, as a dull lecturer, and after he died his most important book was described in words like "systematic," "exhaustive," and "comprehensive," never in language suggesting great imagination or flair. "An old stick-in-the-mud," someone once called him.

...Of course, Ramanujan's fate had always hung on a knife edge, and it had never taken more than the slightest want of imagination, the briefest hesitancy, to tip the balance against him. Only the most stubborn persistence on the part of his friend Rajagopalachari had gained him the sympathy of Ramachandra Rao. And Hardy himself was put off by Ramanujan's letter before he was won over by it. The cards are stacked, against any original mind, and perhaps properly so. After all, many who claim the mantle of "new and original" are indeed new, and original - but not better. So, in a sense, it should be neither surprising nor reason for any but the mildest rebuke that Hobson and Baker said no. Nor should it be surprising that no one: in India had made much of Ramanujan's work. Hardy was perhaps England's premier mathematician, the beneficiary of the finest education, in touch with the latest mathematical thought and, to boot, an expert in several fields Ramanujan plowed .... And yet a day with Ramanujan's theorems had left him bewildered. I had never seen anything in the least like them before. Like the Indians, Hardy did not know what to make of Ramanujan's work. Like them, he doubted his own judgment of it. Indeed, it is not just that he discerned genius in Ramanujan that redounds to his credit today; it is that he battered down his own wall of skepticism to do so. That Ramanujan was Indian probably didn't taint him in Hardy's eyes.

Personally, having finished reading the book, I think Kanigel is wrong to think there is so much contingency here. He paints a vivid picture of why Ramanujan had failed out of school, lost his scholarships, and had difficulties publishing, and why two Cambridge mathematicians might mostly ignore his letter: Ramanujan's stubborn refusal to study non-mathematical topics and refusal to provide reasonably rigorous proofs. His life could have been much easier if he had been less eccentric and prideful. That despite all his self-inflicted problems he was brought to Cambridge anyway is a testimony to how talent will out.