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 and ignorance.

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.