Kit-Cat Club [ Association / Associational culture / Politics & Society ]
… its first chairman (or ‘secretary’) was the publisher-bookseller Jacob Tonson (1656-1736), who gathered his poets and playwrights together with wealthy noblemen – initially, the bibliophile jurist John Somers (1651-1716) – in order to … author and lodger by 1693, then John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) who met Congreve and Tonson after the success of his first play at the Theatre Royal in 1696. Through Charles Sackville, 6 th Earl of Dorset (1643-1706), Tonson was then introduced … at the Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn theatres during 1703-04, and Kit-Cat subscription funded a revival of three plays at the Queen’s Theatre in early 1707. 13 . A play titled Squire Trelooby (1704) by four members of the Club, a …
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