The Kit-Cat Club

The Kit-Cat Club was founded in the late 1690s when Jacob Tonson, a bookseller of lowly birth, forged a partnership with the pie-maker Christopher (Kit) Cat. What began as an eccentric publishing rights deal - Tonson paying to feed hungry young writers and so receiving first option on their works - developed into a unique gathering of intellects and interests, including famous figures such as John Vanbrugh, William Congreve, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Robert Walpole.

Ophelia Field portrays a formative period in British history through the Club’s intimate lens. She describes the vicious Tory-Whig ‘paper wars’, the London theatre world and its battles over sexual morality, the making of England’s Union with Scotland, Dublin society as governed by Kit-Cats, and the hurly-burly of Westminster politics. The book unravels the deceit, rivalry, friendships and fortunes lost and found through the Club, along with descriptions of how its alcohol-fuelled, all-male meetings were conducted. 

Tracing the Kit-Cat Club’s far-reaching influence for the first time, as the unofficial centre of Whig power and patronage through the reigns of William & Mary, Anne and George I, this group biography illuminates a period when Britain was searching for, and beginning to discover, a new identity.

‘‘[M]agnificient... After reading this stimulating book, it is shocking to realise that the Kit-Cat Club has had to wait so long for its influence to be recognised. Field offers rich compensation , in a book that is both instructive and engrossingly readable.’’ – Miranda Seymour in The Guardian (Book of the Week) 

‘‘[E]legantly written and deeply researched...accessible (and original)...
Field has written a fitting memorial to a remarkable body of men who contributed so much to British politics and culture.’’ – John Brewer in The Sunday Times 

‘‘This is a wonderful book, which puts most popular history to shame by its intelligence, clarity and powerful story-telling... a brilliant portrait of England at the beginning of the modern age.’’ – Kathryn Hughes in The Mail on Sunday

‘‘What particularly distinguishes this book is the humane perspective in which the writer places her protagonists... As an essay in group biography her book presents an authoritative portrait of a genuinely revolutionary era.’’ – Jonathan Keates in The Sunday Telegraph

‘‘[Field] has a native gift for historical retrieval so that we see the past in close-up, as it were, as well as in wide view.’’ – Peter Ackroyd in The Times 

‘‘[A] bold and hugely entertaining book’’ written ‘‘with wit and verve...
Field’s identification with the Whigs gives rise to some startling and maybe salutary rearrangements of the cultural furniture.’’ – Victoria Glendinning in Standpoint 

‘‘[H]ighly intelligent... Field argues persuasively that the club transformed both politics and English cultural identity....’’ – Jane Stevenson in The Observer 

‘‘It is a testament to Field's skill that the members of the Club come to life in such vivid and dynamic ways. There is a great deal of panache and pungency alongside the unfussy explication of the finer points of Georgian political intrigue.’’ – Stuart Kelly in Scotland on Sunday  - Also picked as one of five 'Best Books of the Summer' for 2008.

‘‘What a wonderful subject Ophelia Field has found, and how adroitly she has handled it.’’ – Blair Worden in The Spectator 

‘‘[N]o record of what was said at the Kit-Cat Club meetings survives. The author turns this to her advantage, allowing the book to meander eruditely, rather like an 18th-century conversation.’’ – The Economist 

‘‘I like Field because it is the sort of brainy, literate history that most publishers have foreswarn’’ ‘‘The Kit-Cat Club is a wonderful subject for a book and Field has handled it beautifully, with a balance of firm erudition and gentle wit appropriate to a subject whose members established the gold standard of English prose...’’– Stephen Bayley in The New Statesman

‘‘If you ruefully agreed with John O'Farrell's claim in his Utterly Impartial History of Britain that the history of our islands 'really is a fascinating and compelling story, unless you have the bad luck to be studying The Whig Oligarchy 1714-1763', Field's book is your antidote... Field's clear and scholarly account of both the politics and the personalities shows how one man's idea that began in a pie shop became a 'cultural institution, literary clique and political think-tank' that shaped a nation.’’– Sarah Burton in The Independent

‘‘A hugely enjoyable study of male friendship... Ophelia Field has written the definitive history of these men and their influential society, the Kit-Cat Club. The story is as beguiling as the portraits themselves; in her hands these enigmatic oil paintings become flesh and blood again.... Kneller's portly gentlemen in their frames have a new reason to smile.’’– Suzi Feay in The Independent on Sunday

‘‘[T]horough and entertaining...
Field is meticulous in describing the literary and other artistic achievements of the wits in the club: but the fascination of this book lies in the tale she tells of their social advancement and, to an extent, of the way the club altered manners and attitudes to class around the country...
[N]ot merely a useful work for anyone interested in the history of the decades following the Glorious Revolution, but for anyone interested in the way modern Britain came to be created.’’ – Simon Heffer in The Literary Review

‘‘[A] fascinating and elegant book, thoroughly researched and giving a full and brilliant picture of one of the most interesting and important periods in English, indeed British, history.’’ – Alan Massie in The Scotsman

‘‘This enterprising club required an enterprising commentator, and in Ophelia Field it has found one.’’ – The Irish Times

‘‘This first ever chronicle of the Whig talking shop and political thinktank, the Kit-Cat Club, is an historical and biographical tour de force, packed with detail and insight into the political life of the first two decades of the 18th century... [A] lively survey of the political 'big beasts' of the day that is as rich as one of those pies from Christopher Catling's tavern that gave its name to the club in the first place.’’– Tim Richardson in Country Life

‘‘[A]dmirably equipped to grapple with the complexities of the political arena inhabited by the Kit-Cats, following their careers beyond the purlieus of the club through the corridors of power at home and abroad.’’– Martin Postle in The Art Newspaper

‘‘[G]ripping... Field shines a searching and affectionate light on what turned out to be far more than a literary pie-eating arrangement... This tale of the bawdy and bustling world of literary gossip and infighting, Tatler, politics, booze and Fleet Street in the 1690s is a must-read.’’ – City AM

‘‘Ophelia Field has had a brilliant idea in writing such a book and has done a scholarly and pleasing job.’’ – Edward Pearce in Tribune magazine

‘‘Field relish[es] her subject..so it's no surprise that the result is hugely entertaining.’’ – Waterstone's Books Quarterly

‘‘[V]ivid and massively detailed.’’ – Time Out

‘‘After her superb life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Field has unearthed a rich vein of misplaced history in 1690-1730, blending atmosphere with accuracy and, above all, readability.’’ – The Islington Tribune

‘‘[M]eticulously researched and superlatively written... [E]ntertaining, insightful and well-judged.’’ – The Sunday Business Post

‘‘Ophelia Field brings these illustrious men to life while also describing one of the most exciting periods in British cultural history.’’ –The National Trust Magazine

Also selected as BOOK OF THE WEEK in The Week, The Oldie and FirstPost.com and as one of the Financial Times' HISTORY BOOKS OF THE YEAR for 2008.

‘‘[W]onderfully readable and impeccably researched...’’ – Katie Owen in The Sunday Telegraph (Five stars)

‘‘[E]legantly written...This deeply researched book is a fitting memorial to a remarkable body of men who contributed so much to British politics and culture.’’ – John Brewer in The Sunday Times

‘‘[B]rilliant.’’ – Ian Pindar in The Guardian

‘‘[A] fascinating study...’’ – Ian Critchley in The Telegraph

Hardback: July 2008, Harper Press

Paperback: February 2009, Harper Perennial