The Belfast Literary Society was founded in 1801 and survives as the second oldest learned society in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

(the Belfast Reading Society, now the

Linen Hall Library The Linen Hall Library is located at 17 Donegall Square North, Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is the oldest library in Belfast and the last subscribing library in Northern Ireland. The Library is physically in the centre of Belfast, and more g ...

, predates it by just over a decade). Its first meeting was held in the long demolished Exchange Rooms in Belfast on 23 October. Among the 12 founding members were the

Trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the F ...

-educated minister of Belfast's First Presbyterian congregation and historian
Dr. William Bruce
proprietor of the ''Belfast News-Letter'
Henry Joy
and the polymath and "father of Belfast medicine", James McDonnell. The members met "on the first Monday before each full moon" to hear and discuss papers on "literature, science of the arts". Given the still considerable tensions within the wake of the 1798 United Irish rebellion, the society agreed to avoid political topics. But in its early years, "politics did not avoid the society". In 1803, an original member, the botanist and former United Irishman John Templeton, withdrew rather than associate Dr. MacDonnell who had signed a subscription for the capture of the unreformed rebel Thomas Russell. Russell, who had been their mutual friend, was subsequently hanged. Among the Society's first corresponding members there was another United Irish veteran,

David Bailie Warden David Bailie Warden was a republican insurgent in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and, in later exile, a United States consul in Paris. While in American service Watson protested the corruption of diplomatic service by the "avaricious" spirit of com ...

, American consul in Paris. in 1798 Warden had led the rebels in the capture of

Newtownards Newtownards is a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies at the most northern tip of Strangford Lough, 10 miles (16 km) east of Belfast, on the Ards Peninsula. It is in the Civil parishes in Ireland, civil parish of Newtownard ...

. However, the mutual interest was entirely scientific: an American journal Warden had kept on weather, disease, and meteorological phenomena.

William Drennan William Drennan (23 May 1754 – 5 February 1820) was an Irish physician and writer who moved the formation in Belfast and Dublin of the Society of United Irishmen. He was the author of the Society's original "test" which, in the cause of ...

, the original instigator of the United Irishmen, refused nomination to the Society in 1807. Instead with Templeton and a radical linen merchant, John Hancock, he founded the ''Belfast Monthly Magazine'' as an alternative expression of cultural and intellectual life in the town. Bruce, who had become the principal of the town's leading school,

Belfast Academy The Belfast Royal Academy (commonly shortened to ) is the oldest school in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is a co-educational, non-denominational voluntary grammar school in north Belfast. The Academy is one of 8 schools in Northern ...

, subsequently led an unsuccessful opposition to Drennan's plans for a new, decidedly more liberal, school and college: the Belfast (later Royal Belfast) Academical Institution which opened its doors in 1814. The first paper published by the Society, by the Rev. William Richardson on a proposed species of winter hay, was pointedly dedicated to Bruce as an educator of "the youth of Belfast in the principles of religion, learning and loyalty". As a permanent addition to the intellectual life Belfast, the Literary Society was eclipsed by the

Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society was founded in 1821 to promote the scientific study of animals, plants, fossils, rocks and minerals. The Society was founded by George Crawford Hyndman, James Lawson Drummond, James Grim ...

(1821) particularly after the opening in 1831 of its celebrated museum in College Square.

References

{{Reflist Organizations established in 1801 Organisations based in Belfast 1801 establishments in Ireland