A literary circle or coterie, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, is a "small group of writers (and others) bound together more by friendship and habitual association than by a common literary cause or style that might unite a school or movement. The term often has pejorative connotations of exclusive cliquishness".Baldick, Chris. "Coterie". The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (4 ed.). Oxford University Press, 2015. Accessed 29 Jan. 2024.
A literary circle differs from a writing circle, in that the latter usually includes only writers and the focus is on the process of writing. A literary circle also differs from a literary society, in that the latter need not contain any writers; members of a literary society come together to discuss or celebrate literary works or authors.
Famous or noteworthy examples include:
Wilton Circle, UK, 16th-century group centred on Mary Sidney The Muiderkring, Netherlands, early 17th century Streatham Worthies, UK, late 18th century Literary Salon, Argentina, 1830s, which included the President of Argentina, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Juan Bautista Alberdi, the main thinker behind the Constitution of Argentina Wuppertal poets' circle, Germany, 1850s Marston's coterie, UK, 1880s The Bloomsbury Group, UK, c. 1907 to 1930 The Mutual Admiration Society, UK, 1910s Whitechapel Boys, UK, early 20th century Algonquin Roundtable, USA, 1919–1929 Florida Group, Argentina, 1920s, which included Jorge Luis Borges Boedo Group, Argentina, 1920s Stratford-on-Odéon, France, 1920s El Floridita literary circle, Cuba, 1920s, which included Ernest Hemingway The Harlem Renaissance, USA, 1920s and 1930s The Inklings, UK, c. 1930s and 1940s South Side Writers Group, USA, 1930s and 1940s Budh Sabha, India, 1932–present Misty poets, China, 1970s to 1990s
See also Literary society
Notes
Further reading Baird, Ileana. Social Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century: Clubs, Literary Salons, Textual Coteries. Academia (Downloadable PDF) Bowers, Will, and Hannah Leah Crummé, eds. Re-evaluating the Literary Coterie, 1580–1830: From Sidney to Blackwood's. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: tps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54553-4 Fulford, Tim. Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries: The Dialect of the Tribe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137518897 Brady, Deirdre F. Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers' Club (1933-1958). Liverpool University Press, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789622461.001.0001 Schellenberg, Betty A. Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture 1740–1790. Cambridge University Press, 2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316423202.001 Scuriatti, Laura, ed. Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds: Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community. Peter Lang, 2019. DOI:10.3726/b11511
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