Nonsense Club
   HOME
*





Nonsense Club
The Nonsense Club was a scandalous club of 18th-century Kingdom of Great Britain, British satirists centred on Westminster School. Its members included the satirists and poets Charles Churchill (satirist), Charles Churchill and Robert Lloyd (poet), Robert Lloyd, the parodist Bonnell Thornton, the nature poet William Cowper, and the dramatist George Colman the Elder, George Colman. Some of the group's meetings may also have been attended by William Hogarth. The club engaged in a host of colourfully virulent literary and theatrical battles, produced a distinctive brand of satire, and combined its impact with that of John Wilkes, Wilkes to foment some of the most important political debates of its time. Further reading

* * * 18th century in London Clubs and societies in London {{UK-org-stub ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Kingdom Of Great Britain
The Kingdom of Great Britain (officially Great Britain) was a Sovereign state, sovereign country in Western Europe from 1 May 1707 to the end of 31 December 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united the kingdoms of Kingdom of England, England (which included Wales) and Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland to form a single kingdom encompassing the whole island of Great Britain and its outlying islands, with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The unitary state was governed by a single Parliament of Great Britain, parliament at the Palace of Westminster, but distinct legal systems – English law and Scots law – remained in use. The formerly separate kingdoms had been in personal union since the 1603 "Union of the Crowns" when James VI of Scotland became King of England and King of Ireland. Since James's reign, who had been the first to refer to himself as "king of Great Britain", a political un ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Satirists
This is an incomplete list of writers, cartoonists and others known for involvement in satire – humorous social criticism. They are grouped by era and listed by year of birth. Included is a list of modern satires. Under Contemporary, 1930-1960 P.J. O'Rourke Joe Queenan Early satirical authors *Aesop (c. 620–560 BCE, Ancient Greece) – ''Aesop's Fables'' *Diogenes (c. 412–323 BCE, Ancient Greece) *Aristophanes (c. 448–380 BCE, Ancient Greece) – ''The Frogs'', '' The Birds'', and '' The Clouds'' *Gaius Lucilius (c. 180–103 BCE, Roman Republic) *Horace (65–8 BCE, Roman Republic) – ''Satires'' *Ovid (43 BCE – 17 CE, Roman Republic/Roman Empire) – '' The Art of Love'' *Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE – 65 CE, Hispania/Rome) – ''Apocolocyntosis'' *Persius (34–62 CE, Roman Empire) *Petronius (c. 27–66 CE, Roman Empire) – ''Satyricon'' *Juvenal (1st to early 2nd cc. CE, Roman Empire) – ''Satires'' *Lucian (c. 120–180 CE, Roman Empire) *Apuleius (c. 123– ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Westminster School
(God Gives the Increase) , established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560 , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , head_label = Head Master , head = Gary Savage , chair_label = Chairman of Governors , chair = John Hall, Dean of Westminster , founder = Henry VIII (1541) Elizabeth I (1560 – refoundation) , address = Little Dean's Yard , city = London, SW1P 3PF , country = England , local_authority = City of Westminster , urn = 101162 , ofsted = , dfeno = 213/6047 , staff = 105 , enrolment = 747 , gender = BoysCoeducational (Sixth Form) , lower_age = 13 (boys), 16 (girls) , upper_age = 18 , houses = Busby's College Ashburnham Dryden's Grant's Hakluyt's Liddell's Milne's Purcell's Rigaud's Wren's , colours = Pink , public ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Charles Churchill (satirist)
Charles Churchill (February 1732 – 4 November 1764) was an English poet and satirist. Early life Churchill was born in Vine Street, Westminster. His father, Rev. Charles Churchill, was rector of Rainham, Essex, held the curacy and lectureship of St Johns, Westminster, from 1733, and Charles was educated at Westminster School, where he became a good classical scholar, and formed a close and lasting friendship with Robert Lloyd. He was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge on 8 July 1748. Churchill contracted a marriage with a Miss Scot within the rules of the Fleet in his eighteenth year, and never lived at Cambridge; the young couple lived in his father's house, and Churchill was afterwards sent to the north of England to prepare for holy orders. He became curate of the church of St Thomas à Becket in South Cadbury, Somerset, and, on receiving priest's orders (1756), began to act as his father's curate at Rainham. Two years later the elder Churchill died, and the son w ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Robert Lloyd (poet)
: Robert Lloyd (1733–1764) was an English poet and satirist. Lloyd was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1755 and M.A. in 1758. He was author of the popular poem ''The Actor'' (1760) and the comic opera ''The Capricious Lovers'' (1764), first performed at Drury Lane just a few weeks before his death. He was co-author, with George Colman, of ''Ode to Obscurity'' and ''Ode to Oblivion'', both published in the early 1760s, and both satires on the works of the poets William Mason and Thomas Gray. He was also co-editor of ''St James's Magazine'' (1762-3), and member of the infamous Nonsense Club of Old Westminster men with Bonnell Thornton, George Colman, William Cowper and others. Lloyd was often in debt, and apparently died in Fleet Prison on 15 December 1764, shortly after the death of his lifelong friend Charles Churchill, to whose sister, Patty, he was engaged. Churchill's sister died shortly after. The ''Dictionary of Nati ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Bonnell Thornton
Bonnell Thornton (1725–1768) was an English poet, essayist, and critic. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1747. In 1752 Thornton founded the ''Drury Lane Journal'', a satirical periodical which, among other things, lampooned other journals such as Johnson's ''Rambler'', ''The Gentleman's Magazine'' and ''The London Magazine''. Twelve issues were published between January and April 1752. From 1754 to 1756 he published, with George Colman, a six-page weekly serial, ''The Connoisseur'', which, although criticised by Dr. Johnson for lack of substance, ran to 140 issues. He was a frequent contributor to ''The Gentleman's Magazine''. Thornton was also a member of the Nonsense Club of Old Westminster men with George Colman, William Cowper, Charles Churchill and Robert Lloyd. He married Sylvia Braithwaite, younger and posthumous daughter of Colonel John Braithwaite by his wife Silvia Cole, and sister of Major-General Sir ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

William Cowper
William Cowper ( ; 26 November 1731 – 25 April 1800) was an English poet and Anglican hymnwriter. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the best modern poet", whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem ''Yardley-Oak''. After being institutionalised for insanity, Cowper found refuge in a fervent evangelical Christianity. He continued to suffer doubt and, after a dream in 1773, believed that he was doomed to eternal damnation. He recovered and wrote more religious hymns. His religious sentiment and association with John Newton (who wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace") led to much of the poetry for which he is best remembered, and to the series of Olney Hymns. His poem "Light Shining out of Darkness" gave English the phrase: "God moves ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

George Colman The Elder
George Colman (April 1732 – 14 August 1794) was an English dramatist and essayist, usually called "the Elder", and sometimes "George the First", to distinguish him from his son, George Colman the Younger. He also owned a theatre. Early life He was born in Florence, where his father was stationed as British Resident Minister (diplomatic envoy) at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Colman's father died within a year of his son's birth and William Pulteney- afterwards Lord Bath- whose wife was Mrs. Colman's sister, undertook to educate the boy. After he received private education in Marylebone, George attended Westminster School. Colman left school in due course for Christ Church, Oxford. There he made the acquaintance of the parodist Bonnell Thornton, with whom he co-founded '' The Connoisseur'' (1754–1756), a periodical which "wanted weight," as Johnson said, although it reached its 140th number. He left Oxford after taking his degree in 1755 and, having been entered a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

William Hogarth
William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he is perhaps best known for his series ''A Harlot's Progress'', ''A Rake's Progress'' and '' Marriage A-la-Mode''. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian". Hogarth was born in London to a lower-middle-class family. In his youth he took up an apprenticeship with an engraver, but did not complete the apprenticeship. His father underwent periods of mixed fortune, and was at one time imprisoned in lieu of outstanding debts, an event that is thought to have informed William's paintings and prints with a hard edge. Influenced by French and Italian painting and engraving, Hogarth's works are mostly sat ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

John Wilkes
John Wilkes (17 October 1725 – 26 December 1797) was an English radical journalist and politician, as well as a magistrate, essayist and soldier. He was first elected a Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of his voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives. In 1768, angry protests of his supporters were suppressed in the Massacre of St George's Fields. In 1771, he was instrumental in obliging the government to concede the right of printers to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates. In 1776, he introduced the first bill for parliamentary reform in the British Parliament. During the American War of Independence, he was a supporter of the American rebels, adding further to his popularity with American Whigs. In 1780, however, he commanded militia forces which helped put down the Gordon Riots, damaging his popularity with many radicals. This marked a turning point, leading him to ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Library Of Congress Catalog
The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) is a system of library classification developed by the Library of Congress in the United States, which can be used for shelving books in a library. LCC is mainly used by large research and academic libraries, while most public libraries and small academic libraries used the Dewey Decimal Classification system. The classification was developed by James Hanson (chief of the Catalog Department), with assistance from Charles Martel, in 1897, while they were working at the Library of Congress. It was designed specifically for the purposes and collection of the Library of Congress to replace the fixed location system developed by Thomas Jefferson. LCC has been criticized for lacking a sound theoretical basis; many of the classification decisions were driven by the practical needs of that library rather than epistemological considerations. Although it divides subjects into broad categories, it is essentially enumerative in nature. That is, it ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives. First series Hoping to emulate national biographical collections published elsewhere in Europe, such as the '' Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (1875), in 1882 the publisher George Smith (1824–1901), of Smith, Elder & Co., planned a universal dictionary that would include biographical entries on individuals from world history. He approached Leslie Stephen, then editor of the ''Cornhill Magazine'', owned by Smith, to become the editor. Stephen persuaded Smith that the work should focus only on subjects from the United Kingdom and its present and former colonies. An early working title was the ''Biographia Britannica'', the name of an earlier eightee ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]