membership organisation
A membership organization is any organization that allows people or entities to subscribe, and often requires them to pay a membership fee or "subscription". Membership organizations typically have a particular purpose, which involves connecting pe ...
established as a place where writers could meet and talk. It was founded by the novelist and critic
Walter Besant
Sir Walter Besant (14 August 1836 – 9 June 1901) was an English novelist and historian. William Henry Besant was his brother, and another brother, Frank, was the husband of Annie Besant.
Early life and education
The son of wine merchant Willi ...
in 1891. It is headquartered at the
National Liberal Club
The National Liberal Club (NLC) is a London private members' club, open to both men and women. It was established by William Ewart Gladstone in 1882 to provide club facilities for Liberal Party campaigners among the newly enlarged electorate ...
.
The Authors' Club was based for many years next door to its present site, on
Whitehall Court
Whitehall Court in the City of Westminster, England, is one contiguous building but consists of two separate constructions. The south end was designed by Thomas Archer and A. Green and constructed as a block of luxury residential apartments in ...
, first moving into the National Liberal Club in 1966. After ten years there, in 1976 the Authors' Club joined forces with
The Arts Club
The Arts Club is a London private members' club founded in 1863 by, among others, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and Lord Leighton in Dover Street, Mayfair. It remains a meeting place for men and women involved in the creative arts either ...
in Dover Street, London W1. In 2011 it moved to Blacks, a Grade 2* listed building by John Meard in
Dean Street
Dean Street is a street in Soho, central London, running from Oxford Street south to Shaftesbury Avenue.
Historical figures and places
In 1764 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then a young boy, gave a recital at 21 Dean Street.
Admiral Nelson stayed ...
,
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develo ...
— a house that was once home to a club run by Samuel Johnson and
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...
— where it remained for three years. It has now returned to its old home in the National Liberal Club. The Club welcomes both men and women as members, and is open to all those "professionally engaged with literature".
It was at a dinner at the Authors’ Club that Oscar Wilde denounced the censorship of his play '' Salome''. "Casting aside all his gifts of humour and irony the angry Irish poet poured out his sense of assault and battery committed upon himself and laid his spirit bare and bruised before us. Having finished he did not sit down again but swept from the company still overwhelmed by the weight of his wrongs."
Three Poets Laureate —
Alfred Austin
Alfred Austin (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or refused the honour. It was cl ...
,
John Masefield
John Edward Masefield (; 1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 1930 until 1967. Among his best known works are the children's novels ''The Midnight Folk'' and ...
and John Betjeman — have graced its ranks, while guest speakers included
Émile Zola
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of ...
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
,
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' (published in 1885–1886), '' A Little ...
,
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
, Bram Stoker, TS Eliot and Clement Attlee. Arthur Conan Doyle was for many years chairman, and often used to read his manuscripts to members prior to publication.
The first president of the Authors' Club was the novelist
George Meredith
George Meredith (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but he gradually established a reputation as a novelist. '' The Ord ...
; he was followed by Thomas Hardy; who was in turn succeeded by
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, (; 9 May 1860 19 June 1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several succ ...
.List of Members, Authors' Club, London, 1928. Subsequent presidents included the architectural historian Sir
Banister Fletcher
Sir Banister Flight Fletcher (15 February 1866 – 17 August 1953) was an English architect and architectural historian, as was his father, also named Banister Fletcher. They wrote the standard textbook ''A History of Architecture'' ...
, the Anglo-Irish writer, dramatist and poet Lord Dunsany,
Compton Mackenzie
Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie, (17 January 1883 – 30 November 1972) was a Scottish writer of fiction, biography, histories and a memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur and lifelong Scottish nationalist. He was one of th ...
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'' columnist John Walsh.
Awards
The Club holds literary lunches and dinners. It hosts three literary awards each year: the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the
Dolman Best Travel Book Award
The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards celebrate the best travel writing and travel writers in the world. The awards include the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing ...
, and the Banister Fletcher Award for the best book on art or architecture.
Notable members
Past members
*
Arnold Bennett
Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist. He wrote prolifically: between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboratio ...
*
Kate Louise Brown
Kate Louise Brown (May 8, 1857Harringshaw, William T. ''Herringshaw's National Library of American Biography''. vol. 1, American Publisher's Association, 1909, catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000331356/Cite. – December 31, 1921) was a Teacher, c ...
*
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...
Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humourist, best known for the comic travelogue ''Three Men in a Boat'' (1889). Other works include the essay collections '' Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow'' (1886) an ...
*
Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament (for Romford, in Essex). In ...
*
Barry Pain
Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 September 18645 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer.
Biography
Born in Cambridge, Barry Pain was educated at Sedbergh School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He became a prominent contri ...
*
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secr ...
*
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work ''A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English.
Powell' ...
*
Ameen Rihani
Ameen Rihani (Amīn Fāris Anṭūn ar-Rīḥānī) ( ar, أمين الريحاني / ALA-LC: ''Amīn ar-Rīḥānī''; Freike, Lebanon, November 24, 1876 – September 13, 1940), was a Lebanese American writer, intellectual and political a ...
*
Ernest Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of ...
G. M. Trevelyan
George Macaulay Trevelyan (16 February 1876 – 21 July 1962) was a British historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the ...
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel '' The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays ''Our Town'' and '' The Skin of Our Teeth'' — ...
Francis Younghusband
Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942) was a British Army officer, explorer, and spiritual writer. He is remembered for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British ...
*
Israel Zangwill
Israel Zangwill (21 January 18641 August 1926) was a British author at the forefront of cultural Zionism during the 19th century, and was a close associate of Theodor Herzl. He later rejected the search for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and ...
Amanda Craig
Amanda Craig (born 1959) is a British novelist, critic and journalist. She was a recipient of the Catherine Pakenham Award.
Early life
Born in South Africa, Craig grew up in Italy before moving to London. Her parents were British journalist, ...
Rachel Lichtenstein
Rachel Lichtenstein is a writer, artist and archivist.
In 1999 she wrote '' Rodinsky's Room'' with Iain Sinclair, and since then she has published ''Rodinsky's Whitechapel'' (1999) and ''On Brick Lane'' (2007). This last will be joined by two othe ...
*
Deborah Moggach
Deborah Moggach (née Hough; born 28 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. She has written nineteen novels, including '' The Ex-Wives'', ''Tulip Fever'' (made into the film of the same name), ''These Foolish Things'' (made into ...
*
Nicola Monaghan
Nicola Monaghan is an English novelist and author of ''The Killing Jar'', ''Starfishing'' and ''The Okinawa Dragon''. She grew up in Nottingham, England, and gave up a career in finance to pursue an MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent Uni ...
*
Andrew O'Hagan
Andrew O'Hagan (born 1968) is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. Three of his novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize and he has won several awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
His most recent novel is ''Mayf ...
*
Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth (born 20 June 1952) is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crosswor ...