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The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation

door Ophelia Field

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692381,277 (3.9)1
Ophelia Field's 'Kit-Cat Club' is a story of a changing time in 17th-century Britain, during the reigns of Queen Anne and George I, when a group of men and their enterprising initiatives paved the way for new literary and political viewpoints, born out of the most unexpected circumstances. The Kit-Cat Club was founded in the late 1690s when Jacob Tonson, a bookseller of lowly birth, forged a partnership with the pie-maker Christopher (Kit) Cat. What began as an eccentric publishing rights deal - Tonson paying to feed hungry young writers and so receiving first option on their works - developed into a unique gathering of intellects and interests, then into the unofficial centre of Whig power during the reigns of William & Mary, Anne and George I. With consummate skill, Ophelia Field, author of the acclaimed biography of the first Duchess of Marlborough, 'The Favourite', portrays this formative period in British history through the club's intimate lens. She describes the vicious Tory-Whig 'paper wars', the mechanics of aristocratic patronage, the London theatre world and its battles over sexual morality, England's union with Scotland, Dublin society governed by a Kit-Cat and the hurly-burly of Westminster politics. Field expertly unravels the deceit, rivalry, friendships and fortunes lost and found through the club, along with wonderful descriptions of how its alcohol-fuelled, all-male meetings were conducted. Tracing the Kit-Cat Club's far-reaching influence for the first time, this group biography illuminates a time when Britain was searching for its own identity.… (meer)
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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. ( )
  pierthinker | Jun 6, 2009 |
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. ( )
1 stem Larxol | Jan 4, 2009 |
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Ophelia Field's 'Kit-Cat Club' is a story of a changing time in 17th-century Britain, during the reigns of Queen Anne and George I, when a group of men and their enterprising initiatives paved the way for new literary and political viewpoints, born out of the most unexpected circumstances. The Kit-Cat Club was founded in the late 1690s when Jacob Tonson, a bookseller of lowly birth, forged a partnership with the pie-maker Christopher (Kit) Cat. What began as an eccentric publishing rights deal - Tonson paying to feed hungry young writers and so receiving first option on their works - developed into a unique gathering of intellects and interests, then into the unofficial centre of Whig power during the reigns of William & Mary, Anne and George I. With consummate skill, Ophelia Field, author of the acclaimed biography of the first Duchess of Marlborough, 'The Favourite', portrays this formative period in British history through the club's intimate lens. She describes the vicious Tory-Whig 'paper wars', the mechanics of aristocratic patronage, the London theatre world and its battles over sexual morality, England's union with Scotland, Dublin society governed by a Kit-Cat and the hurly-burly of Westminster politics. Field expertly unravels the deceit, rivalry, friendships and fortunes lost and found through the club, along with wonderful descriptions of how its alcohol-fuelled, all-male meetings were conducted. Tracing the Kit-Cat Club's far-reaching influence for the first time, this group biography illuminates a time when Britain was searching for its own identity.

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