‘The Darling of the Temple‐Coffee‐House Club’: Science, Sociability and Satire in Early Eighteenth‐Century London

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the relationship between metropolitan sociability and the production of natural knowledge in early eighteenth‐century London. It considers three discursive sites where the intellectual and sociable worlds converged: manuscript correspondence, the coffee‐house club and published research. Focusing on the Temple Coffee‐House Club's habits of scholarship and sociability, the argument examines the club's ongoing historical reception and its satirical depiction in William King's The Transactioneer. In the process this article re‐evaluates recent critical, methodological and historiographical debates concerning the changing institutional agenda of the Royal Society, natural philosophy and epistemological credit, and the archaeology of coffee‐house sociability.

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