literary society

Body formed by those interested in literature to meet for discussion of literary topics. Literary societies of national standing in England date from Elizabethan times, when Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney formed the Areopagus; the 18th century saw the foundation of Samuel Johnson's Literary Club.

UK societies In England the principal literary societies, with their dates of foundation, are the Folklore Society (1878), the Society of Authors (1884), the English Association (1906), the Poetry Society (1909), PEN international (1921), and the National Book League (1925). There are also literary societies formed for a special purpose, such as the Early English Text Society and the Classical Association, and literary societies for the study of particular authors, including Jane Austen, Francis Bacon, the Brontës, Robert Burns, Geoffrey Chaucer, Joseph Conrad, William Cowper, Charles Dickens, Samuel Johnson, John Keats, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Lamb, D H Lawrence Samuel Pepys, Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, G B Shaw, R L Stevenson, and William Wordsworth.

US societies In the USA leading literary societies are the Boston Athenaeum (1807), the American Antiquarian Society (1812), the American Folklore Society (1888), the American Dialect Society (1889), the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1898), the Bibliophile Society (1901), the Carnegie Institute of Washington (1902), the American Academy of Art and Letters (1902), and the American Poetry Association (1925). There are also US literary societies for the study of William Caxton, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman.