From the Preface: “Few attempts have been made to focus the Club-life of periods, or to assemble with reasonable limits, the histories of the leading Associations of clubbable Men,—of Statesmen and Politicians, Wits and Poets, Authors, Artists, and Actors, and "men of wit and pleasure," which the town has presented since the days of the Restoration; or in more direct succession, from the reign of Queen Anne, and the days of the Tatler and Spectator, and other Essayists in their wake. The present Work aims to record this Club-life in a series of sketches of the leading Societies, in which, without assuming the gravity of history or biography, sufficient attention is paid to both to give the several narratives the value of trustworthiness.” This edition is a reprint of a book published in 1866.