Clubs and Societies in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

James Kelly, Martyn J. Powell

• Publisher: Four Courts Press
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781846828928
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

Clubs and societies emerged as a distinct feature of the Irish social landscape from the end of the 17th Century, and flourished in the 18th Century. The most notable early organization was the Dublin Philosophical Society, founded in the 1680s. But it was merely the first manifestation of a phenomenon that produced a vast array of clubs and societies shaping social, political, and intellectual life in the 18th Century. Some - the Hell-Fire Club, the Free Masons, the Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick, and the RDS - have left a legacy that continues to echo. However, there is a vast array of philanthropic and charitable bodies, intellectual societies, political bodies such as the Aldermen of Skinners Alley, dining and drinking clubs, sports and hunting clubs, and many more that have been all but forgotten. The contributions in this book reveal the richness of the associational impulse in 18th-Century Ireland.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Club life in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Ireland: in search of an associational world, c.1680-c.1730
• 3. The Dublin Society and other improving societies, 1731-85
• 4. Charitable societies: their genesis and development, 1720-1800
• 5. Dublin’s commercial clubs
• 6. Annuity societies in eighteenth-century Ireland
• 7. Book clubs and reading societies in the late eighteenth century
• 8. Configuring the Irish Enlightenment: reading the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy
• 9. Loyal societies in Ireland, 1690-1790
• 10. The Aldermen of Skinner’s Alley: ultra-Protestantism before the Orange Order
• 11. The patriot clubs of the 1750s
• 12. The Society of Free Citizens and other popular political clubs, 1749-89
• 13. Elite political clubs, 1770-1800
• 14. Opposition political clubs and soieties, 1790-8
• 15. Masonic sociability and its limitations: the case of Ireland
• 16. The Dublin Hellfire Club
• 17. ‘Beef, claret and comminication’: convivial clubs in the public sphere, 1750-1800’
• 18. The Bar Club, 1787-93: a dining club case study
• 19. Hunting clubs and societies
• 20. The pastime of the elite: clubs and societies and the promotion of horse racing
• 21. Clubs and societies in eighteenth-century Munster
• 22. Loyal clubs and societies in Ulster, 1770-1800
• 23. Clubs and societes in eighteenth-century Belfast
• Index