SOURCE: Allen, Robert J. “The Club and the Town: The Kit-Cats and the Toasters.” In The Clubs of Augustan London, pp. 35-54. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933.

In the excerpt below, Allen provides a detailed history of the Kit-Cat Club, with particular emphasis on the members' engagement in political skirmishes.

The greatest political society of the day was the Kit-Cat Club. The name of this august assembly has been of enough curiosity to call forth a number of explanations. That most frequently quoted is in the famous “Epigram on the Toasts of the Kit-Cat Club, Anno 1716,” generally attributed to Dr. John Arbuthnot.

Whence deathless Kit-Cat took its Name,           Few Criticks can unriddle; Some say from Pastry Cook it came,           And some from Cat and Fiddle. 

From no trim Beau's its Name it boasts,           Grey Statesman, or green Wits; But from this Pell-mell-Pack of Toasts,           Of old Cats and...