The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, Massachusetts, of writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-19th century.

Overview

The club began meeting informally at the Albion House in Boston.Mellow, James R. ''Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times''. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980: 539. Publishing agent and lawyer Horatio Woodman first suggested the gatherings among his friends for food and conversation.Gale, Robert L. ''A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion''. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003: 210. By 1856, the organization became more structured with a loose set of rules, with monthly meetings held over dinner at the Parker House. The Parker House served as their place of meeting for many years. It was a hotel built in 1854 by Harvey D. Parker. The gatherings led to the creation of the '' Atlantic Monthly'', to which many of the members contributed. The name was suggested by early member Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. The original members of the group included Woodman,

Louis Agassiz Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history. Spending his early life in Switzerland, he recei ...

, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Senator George Frisbee Hoar, and James Russell Lowell. In the following years, membership was extended to Holmes, Cornelius Conway Felton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and William Hickling Prescott. Other members included

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionism, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist movement of th ...

, Amos Bronson Alcott,

Asa Gray Asa Gray (November 18, 1810 – January 30, 1888) is considered the most important American botany, botanist of the 19th century. His ''Darwiniana'' (1876) was considered an important explanation of how religion and science were not necessaril ...

, John Lothrop Motley, Benjamin Peirce,

Charles Sumner Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811March 11, 1874) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American ...

, John Greenleaf Whittier, and others. Invitations to the group were considered a sort of affirmation of acceptance into Boston's high society. Ohio-native William Dean Howells was invited by James Russell Lowell in 1860 and recalled in a memoir that it seemed like a rite of passage. Holmes joked that Howells's presence served as "something like the apostolic succession... the laying on of hands". A few years later, Howells was named editor of the '' Atlantic Monthly'', which published many of the works by members of the group.O'Connell, Shaun. ''Boston: Voices and Visions''. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010: 92. In 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes published a poem titled "At the Saturday Club" in which he reminisced about the gatherings. By then, many of its members were dead. Ralph Waldo Emerson's son, Edward Waldo Emerson, published two books about the Saturday Club and its members in the early 20th century. A version of the Saturday Club still exists in Boston.

Gallery

File:Oliver Wendell Holmes - Portrait.jpg, Oliver Wendell Holmes File:Agassiz Louis 1807-1873.png, Louis Agassiz File:BenjaminPeirce5.jpg, Benjamin Peirce File:Sumner and Longfellow.jpg, Charles Sumner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863 File:Parkers Ballous1855.JPG, Parker's, School Street, Boston, 1855 File:Emerson seated.jpg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ca.1872 File:Asa Gray, US botanist.jpg, Asa Gray File:John Lothrop Motley - Brady-Handy.jpg, John Lothrop Motley, ca.1860

References

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External links

Guide to the Saturday Club Records
Massachusetts Historical Society
Omni Parker House Boston
at "Historic Hotels of America", National Trust for Historic Preservation
"At the Saturday Club"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes 1855 establishments in Massachusetts Cultural history of Boston Clubs and societies in Boston Philosophical societies in the United States 19th century in Boston

Overview

Gallery

Further reading

References

External links