SOURCE: Timbs, John. “The Kit-Kat Club.” In Clubs and Club Life in London: With Anecdotes of Its Famous Coffee-Houses, Hostelries, and Taverns, from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Time, pp. 47-53. 1872. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1967.

In the following excerpt from a work that was originally published in 1872, Timbs summarizes what is known of the Kit-Cat Club's origins and membership.

This famous Club was a threefold celebrity—political, literary, and artistic. It was the great Society of Whig leaders, formed about the year 1700, temp. William III., consisting of thirty-nine noblemen and gentlemen zealously attached to the House of Hanover; among whom the Dukes of Somerset, Richmond, Grafton, Devonshire, and Marlborough, and (after the accession of George I.) the Duke of Newcastle; the Earls of Dorset, Sunderland, Manchester, Wharton, and Kingston; Lords Halifax and Somers; Sir Robert Walpole, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Granville, Addison, Garth, Maynwaring, Stepney, and Walsh. They...