Kit-Cat Club [ Association / Associational culture / Politics & Society ]
… the 1700s, it had developed an agenda to direct English arts and letters, with a particular emphasis on journalism and opera. 1 . Edward (Ned) Ward, The Secret History of the Clubs (London: 1709) The practices of the Kit-Cat Club were … ‘middling sort’, funding several translations of Greek and Latin classics into English, or the production of ‘native’ operas with English themes and English-language libretti. 8 A remarkably consistent Protestant Whig aesthetic emerged, … of the Celebrated Persons Composing the Kit-Cat Club (London: Hurst, Robinson & co, 1821), p. iii. 8 . Promoting the opera Rosamund with a libretto by Kit-Cat member Joseph Addison, for example, fellow Kit-Cat Richard Steele reported that …
Friendship | Merchants | Patronage | Whigs
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