SOURCE: Geduld, Harry M. “The Kit-Kat Club.” In Prince of Publishers: A Study of the Work and Career of Jacob Tonson, pp. 151-71. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.

In the following essay, Geduld discusses the origins and history of the Kit-Cat Club, paying special attention to the role of publisher Jacob Tonson as founder and secretary.

The social aspect of Jacob Tonson's career is well represented in his role as chairman-secretary to the celebrated Kit-Cat Club, which he helped to inaugurate towards the end of the seventeenth century.¹

During Dryden's lifetime the evolution of the English club was accelerated primarily through the popularity of the newly established coffee-houses and their use for informal political discussion as well as socializing and conviviality. Like many similar meeting-places, the Kit-Cat Club, which in the eighteenth century became the most famous and influential manifestation of the Whig party in its social sphere, appears...