Scriblerus Club

The Scriblerus Club was a literary circle presumably formed in 1713. Its main members were Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope,John Gay, John Arbuthnot and Thomas Parnell, who accordingly referred to themselves as the Scriblerians. Politically the Scriblerius Club can be regarded as the Tory counterpart to the Whig Kit-Kat Club. It may not, however, be confused with the Brothers Club, which was also Tory and had Swift and Arbuthnot among its members. While the Brothers were more directly involved in political matters, the Scriblerians' activities were first and foremost of a literary nature. That is to say, the club's ultimate end was the satire and ridicule of (what its members regarded as) false learning, ignorance and pedantry.

History

The earliest reference to Scriblerian collaboration can be found in a letter from Pope to Gay, where the former explains that he could already win Parnell and Swift for "our design" called "The Works of the Unlearned, published monthly, in which whatever book appears that deserves praise, shall be depreciated ironically" (quoted in Allen 263). However, the club's main project soon became the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, using a fictional character as the group's organ. The men of letters dedicated themselves to their work with considerable zest and apparent unanimity, but the time of regular meetings and close collaborations did hardly last a year and ended in 1714, when Queen Anne I died and the Tories lost power. Furthermore Swift departed for Ireland and Pope retreated to the country the same year. Thus, the club did not become as much of an instiution as the Kit-Kat had, but its members continued their correspondences and remained friends for the rest of their lives.

As a consequence of the club's short existence, its immediate output was quite small. Two stage plays resulted from collaboration of presumably Pope, Gay and Arbuthnot, The What D'Ye Call It (1715) and Three Hours After Marriage (1717). The Memoirs, however, were not published until 1741, so that only Swift and Pope lived to see it. Nevertheless the ideas conceived and exchanged during the times of the club are often said to have inspired some of the mens' major later works, most prominently Swifts Gulliver's Travels, Pope's The Dunciad and Gay's The Beggar's Opera.

Apart from the five core members, Pope later also claimed the membership of Robert Harley, Francis Atterbury, William Congreve and Joseph Addison in an account to Joseph Spence. Although Congreve was a close friend of Swift's, it is doubtful for political reasons that he or Addison were in fact involved. They were both Whigs and attended the Kit-Kat Club. Harley, on the contrary, did meet and support the Scriblerians, but as visitor and patron rather than active member, being each time especially invited. As to Atterbury's inclusion, there is no further evidence.

Martinus Scriblerus

Martinus Scriblerus was invented by the Scriblerians as a character who would in their name comment on the grievances of their society and time. They then named their club after him. The first name, Martin, is said to refer back to either John Dryden’s comic character Sir Martin Mar-all (Encyclopaedia Britannica) or a nickname Harley used for Swift (Allen 261). Scribler was at the time used as a word of contempt for a writer without talent. Both terms were then latinized to indicate his scholarship. Martinus also served the club members as nom de plume, as in Pope's 1727 essay Peri Bathous or the Art of Sinking in Poetry.

In 1751, Richard Owen Cambridge composed a mock epic poem, the Scribleriad, featuring Martinus Scriblerus as its hero.

Sources and further reading

Allen, Robert J. The Clubs of Augustan London. Hamden, CT: Archon, 1967.

Novak, Maximillian E. Eighteenth-Century English Literature. Hamburg: Petersen-Macmillan, 1983.

Richetti, John, ed. The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780. Cambridge: CUP, 2005.

Rumbold, Valerie. "Scriblerus Club [Scriblerians]." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, first published online 24 May 2008, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/71160, archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20090305150619/http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/themes/71/71160.html. Last accessed 7 Nov 2009.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Sriblerus Club." Encyclopædia Britannica, first published online 20 Jul 1998, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/529970/Scriblerus-Club. Last accessed 7 Nov 2009.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Scriblerus_Club.aspx (no longer available)