[The Kit 01] • Kit-Cat Club, The

The fascinating history of the male-only members of the Kit-Cat Club, the unofficial centre of Whig power in 17th century Britain, and home to the greatest political and artistic thinkers of a generation.The Kit-Cat Club was founded in the late 1690s when London bookseller Jacob Tonson forged a partnership with pie-maker Christopher (Kit) Cat. What began as an eccentric publishing rights deal – Tonson paying to feed talented young writers and receiving first option on their works – developed into a unique gathering of intellects and interests, then into an unofficial centre of Whig power during the reigns of William Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, authors of the Tatler and Spectator, who raised English prose to new heights; and John Vanbrugh, a versatile genius whose architecture remains some of the most ambitious in Britain.Field expertly unravels the rivalry, friendships and fortunes lost and found through the club, interspersed with vivid descriptions of its alcohol-fuelled, all-male meetings. Tracing the Kit-Cat Club's far-reaching influence for the first time, this group biography illuminates a period when the British were searching for, and just beginning to find, a new national identity.

Ophelia Field was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and the London School of Economics. She has worked for a variety of refugee and human rights organisations for many years and is the Director of the Writers in Prison Programme at the English Centre of PEN. Ophelia is the author of The Favourite: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and has written for the TLS, Literary Review and Sunday Telegraph. Her work on the Kit-Cat Club was awarded the inaugural Elizabeth Longford grant for biographical research in 2003.