Ophelia Field

It takes a brave biographer to tackle a subject who has been the focus of as much speculation and as many biographies in the past 250 years as has Sarah, the first Duchess of Marlborough (some twenty-five biographies, by the author’s count). Field makes a good stab at chronicling Sarah's public and private lives, drawing on known material by and about this powerful, "so alluring and so unlovable" woman, and organizing it in a readable manner. Those who, like myself, are not well grounded in British history may find themselves confused at times by the plethora of names, parties, and intrigues, and a lot about Sarah remains a tantalizing mystery. Unless new sources are unearthed to add further or more reliable detail to the historical record, however, this is probably as good a biography of Sarah as we will get.… (meer)

The 30 years following the Glorious Revolution in 1688 were the time when the United Kingdom became established as a nation-state and began to take her place in the world that would last for 200 years. This was also the time when the characteristics we know today as ‘English’ or ‘British’ started to appear across society.

Ophelia Field’s ‘The Kit-Kat Club’ is a spirited and meticulous description of that time. Field concentrates on the part played by the informal group of dining and drinking buddies that met weekly to discuss literature, art and music (but not so much of the art). Originally a group of writers this club soon attracted wealthy patrons looking for cultural advancement. Through their involvment the reach of the club entered politics.

It is certainly true that club members were the cream of intellectual life of the period and held many important (and lucrative) government posts – Addison, Steele, Congreve, Vanbrugh.

To make her case that this group of men were the driving force behind the forging of the nation from a cultural perspective Field pretty much excludes mention of anyone who wasn’t in the Kit-Kat. If anything, I think this detrats from her basic premise.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Field has produced a scholarly, readable study of an exciting period in history.… (meer)

Ophelia Field’s book is a proper history, with a hundred pages of bibliography and notes tucked away in the back, but the people and times she documents are so fascinating that the general reader is drawn into it like a family saga. The club was founded by publisher Jacob Tonson as a way to feed and encourage his stable of writers, eventually including the members of the peerage who were the patrons who supported them in the days before there was a mass market for literature. Indeed, Tonson was an inventor of the mass market, with affordable editions aimed at wide sales, rather than just a few wealthy subscribers. The club, named for the pie shop of Christopher Catt, where they first met, came to include the leading members of the Whig party and served as a mechanism by which they guided public opinion through the turbulent political period at the beginning of the 18th Century.
While the club was one of the first venues where the aristocracy met as equals with artists and writers, it is today the commoners who are best remembered. Field brings them to life for us. William Congreve ignores his law studies to sit listening to the ageing Dryden in the coffee house, John Vanbrugh becomes the leading architect of England with no training whatsoever. Joseph Addison seemingly effortlessly rises to the top of both intellectual and political life, while his admiring collaborator Dick Steele suffers being thrown out of his wife’s bed and into debtor’s prison. This is no dry history, but a very readable introduction to some pretty interesting people.… (meer)

A better than average example of the popular historical biographies which have had something of a vogue over the past couple of years. Field is good at not trying to state that her view of Sarah Marlborough is--or could be--a definitive one, and she makes a solid attempt at showing the relationships between public and private which were commonly understood to exist in 18th century Britain. However, it's much too long, and Field needed a much better editor, one who would have told her when she was being repetitive and trying too hard to show off her research.… (meer)