Politics & Society

Kit-Cat Club

Kit-Cat Club

FIELD Ophelia
The Kit-Cat Club (c.1690s-c.1720) was one of the earliest and most influential London gentlemen’s dining clubs. It kickstarted the English craze for eighteenth century clubbing and was the first to turn membership into a social credential. With members drawn exclusively from one Whig faction, yet with foundations in the literary world, it became a hub of patronage along lines of intellectual friendship rather than kinship, an informal venue of political opposition, and a prototype for Dr Johnson’s Club, among many others.
Royal Menagerie

Menageries

SASSO Eleonora
Georgian menageries are to be seen as the predecessors to the more formal zoological societies of the Victorian era. As the British Empire expanded, private and public menageries were populated by exotic animals seen as objects of fascination and wonder and whose aim was to entertain visitors and guests as well as to satisfy the curiosity for the animal world.
Doctor Johnson in the Ante-Room of the Lord Chesterfield Waiting for an Audience

Patronage

DOMSCH Sebastian
In the absence of fully developed markets, patronage (the relation between someone able to dispense something with social or economic value, such as money, connections, public acknowledgment, positions and someone who was able to return the favour with artistic or scientific productions) had for centuries been the main way in which the creation of art – from painting to music and architecture as well as literature – could be realized.
La constitution au Club des Jacobins

Political clubs during the French Revolution

WALTON Charles
This entry examines the political clubs of the French Revolution, focusing especially on the Jacobin Club. It explores the reasons why the clubs strayed from their initial ideals of civil debate and succumbed to lethal factionalism.
Politics

Politics

CHALUS Elaine
Sociability was intrinsic to British politics in the eighteenth-century. For Members of Parliament and members of the House of Lords, politics was face-to-face and personal, operating through social networks, personal connexions and extended family interests. Much political networking, solicitation, manoeuvring, and negotiation took place in mixed-sex social arenas that included women, or were hosted by women.
Private Theatre Performance

Private theatre performances

RUIMI Jennifer
Society theatre was a highly prized activity during the eighteenth century, especially in France. In salons and estates, both grand and modest, people of the same society and social stratum engaged in amateur theatre. Private theatre performances were a practice in which worldliness and aesthetics intersected, inextricably linked with sociability. In exploring the practice, this entry will evaluate the role of worldly connivance in the constitution of collective taste.