a group consisting of “too [two] jolly Swains” who go on an excursion to Nutford for the sake of kissing and drinking cider; their companions include Hannah, Robert, Stephen, the Captain, and Merrifield, who are speakers in the first poem of Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. e.17, seemingly written to commemorate the excursion.

A group of individuals clustered around Diana Burroughs, including Mr. and Miss Crowfoot, Diana's mother, and a friend of Diana's mother. Possibly located in or near the city of Norwick in Norfolk; active c. 1774-1787.

An interconnected, late-eighteenth-century network of fashionable hostesses and political figures Frances Anne (née Greville) Crewe, Lady Crewe; Henrietta (née Spencer) Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough; and Henrietta’s sister Georgiana (née Spencer) Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. Their activities were centred in multiple locations, including London (Devonshire House), Bath, and various country seats. Literary and personal connections included Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Charles James Fox, the Burney family, the Tighe family, and Crewe’s mother Frances Greville.

The final section of Folger MS M.a. 185 features poems written by Daniel Wray or addressed to him, as well as a poem to “Vacuna” (poetic name for the Wrest country house) by Sneyd Davies. Compilation c. late 1730s-early 1740s.

Compiler Anne Blandford was the sister of Elizabeth Blandford Brickenden; both were members of a Bristol-based coterie centred around Hannah More. Others members of this group, which seems to have been active in the 1760s and early 1770s, include William Steele, Miss Hammond, Honour Mary Blandford, Dr. John Langhorne, Anne Steele. See Nicholas D. Smith, The Literary Manuscripts and Letters of Hannah More (Ashgate, 2008).

A circle or network centred around Kidlington in Oxfordshire, various Oxford Colleges, and Leicestershire (Burleigh Park, etc.), and active in the 1760s. Members included various Oxford dons and their extended families. 

An Edinburgh literary circle centred on Lady Charlotte as daughter of the fifth duke of Argyll and wife of Colonel John Campbell, MP; active from the late 1790s to 1809, when her first husband died. Literary members of the circle included Susan Ferrier, Lady Frances Douglas, Dugald Stewart and his second wife Helen D’Arcy Stewart, and John Leyden.

Three generations of a poetical family, beginning with the poet Judith Cowper Madan and her husband Colonel Martin Madan, and including the couple’s two daughters, Penelope Madan Maitland and Maria Madan Cowper, as well as their brothers Martin and Spencer, and Maitland’s daughters Penelope Judith Maitland (later Cope) and Charlotte Maitland. The extended family also included the poetical Ashley Cowper (Judith Cowper Madan’s brother) and the very popular William Cowper (Judith’s nephew).

Judith Cowper Madan and her children Penelope Maitland and Martin Madan were based in London; the family possessed slave-owning plantations on Nevis and St Kitts in the West Indies.

Bodleian Ms.Eng.Poet. c.51, while not a miscellaneous verse manuscript and therefore not included in this database, is also related to the Madan-Maitland family. 

A group of school friends writing between the sister schools New College Oxford and Winchester School, known as the “St. Mary Winton” colleges, c. 1712. Contributors are named by surname at the end of each poem of Beinecke Osborn c.170.

A Stamford, Lincolnshire coterie featuring Sally and Arabella Bate, Joshua Peart, and his youngest sister Eleanor. Eleanor created this compilation of their poetry in 1768. Beinecke Osborn c150 contains a prose description of masquerade costumes including those worn by members of the Peart family.

A London-based network that included John Hawkins, Moses Browne, and Foster Webb, active in c. 1740/41-1757. Their poetry, essays, and song lyrics are recorded, along with supporting correspondence, by Thomas Phillibrown. Discussed in Schellenberg, Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture: 1740–1790 (Cambridge UP, 2016).

A club that met at the Rose tavern in Covent Garden, London, in the 1730s. Members included Richard Miller (addressed as “Precedent of the Rose Club”), Dr. Cotton, and John Weldon.

A social circle located in Stepney and Mile End; active c. 1710s. 

Family circle of Richard Tickell, his wife Mary Linley, son Samuel Tickell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his wife Elizabeth Ann née Linley (Mary’s sister), and William Linley. Contributors from this group were active in England and India, c. 1787-1818.

Centred in Rosanna, County Wicklow, Ireland, around Mary (Blachford) Tighe and her first cousin and husband Henry Tighe; active 1801-1810. Other literary members of the family were Mary’s mother Theodosia (Tighe) Blachford, her maternal uncles Edward and William (the latter was her husband’s father), and her husband's siblings Catherine (Tighe) Hamilton and William Tighe (1766–1816). Mary and her family members had connections with the Ponsonby family, including Sarah Ponsonby and her companion Eleanor Butler (the Ladies of Llangollen), the Bowdlers, Elizabeth Hamilton, Thomas Moore, and other leading Irish, English, and Scottish literary figures.

Part of a network of several generations of nonconformist writers, primarily women, centred in the West Country of England (primarily at Exeter, in Devonshire). Among its most well-known members were Anne Steele, Hannah Towgood Wakeford, and Mary Steele Wakeford. See Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols., ed. Timothy Whelan, Pickering & Chatto, 2011.

A group of individuals clustered around Mrs. C[atherine?] Wyvill and Miss G—ll, seemingly of the York area; active mid-1780s to c. 1797. Discussed in Schellenberg, Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture: 1740–1790(Cambridge UP, 2016).

A coterie centred around Philip Yorke, future 2nd earl of Hardwicke, and his wife Jemima, Marchioness Grey, at Wrest in Bedfordshire from the 1740s to the early 1750s. Discussed in Schellenberg, Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture: 1740–1790 (Cambridge UP, 2016).