Scriblerus Club

The Scriblerus Club was a literary cycle 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" (quoted in Allen 263). Actual cooperation with regular meetings, however, seems to have lasted for hardly a year and ended in 1714, when Queen Anne I died and Swift returned to Ireland. Apart from the five core members, Pope also claimed the membership of Robert Harley, Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, William Congreve and Joseph Addison in an account to Joseph Spence.

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.