Kit-Cat Club [ Association / Associational culture / Politics & Society ]
… in private upstairs rooms of taverns in central London or Hampstead, which locates the Club’s sociability between the public and private spheres. However, starting in 1703, at a property leased by Tonson in Barn Elms, it was the first club … and forcing-ground’ for opera in England. 12 Tonson, meanwhile, used Kit-Cat dominated subscription lists to fund his publication of Caesar’s Commentaries (1712), the first collected volume of essays from The Tatler (1710), and … then to be read, heard, or otherwise consumed collectively. Alongside subscriptions, the Kit-Cat Club made other self-publicising gestures: paying collectively for Dryden’s funeral in 1700, a musical talent competition based around The …
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