Introducing The Scriblerus Club and the people on whom they threw shade…

With the death of Queen Anne on 1 August 1714, a small group of misfit writers found themselves on the margins of British society, hungry for fame but so at loggerheads with contemporary London politics that they were essentially exiled from the elite literary scene.  Their counter-culture response was to form “The Scriblerus Club,” lampooning, mocking, and parodying their way to significance. 

At the club’s center were: Alexander Pope (translator of Homer and self-proclaimed genius poet whose Catholicism and spinal deformity limited his options), Jonathan Swift (enigmatic Anglo-Irish clergyman who wrote Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal), and John Gay (best remembered for The Beggar’s Opera, a musical satire). Their ire grew into satire under the pen-name of Martinus Scriblerus, a fictional dull critic who championed the very writers and print culture figures whom they deemed untalented and unworthy.

The shade thrown by The Scriblerus Club generated a sarcastic magnum opus composed of heroic couplets and entitled The Dunciad. Written by Alexander Pope, The Dunciad was a long mock-epic poem in which thinly disguised versions of then-well-known publishers, booksellers, and writers competed in silly contests as The Dunces. The poem was first released in three “books” in 1728 and by 1743 the final version had ballooned into four. Today, the Scriblerians might well have provided fodder for Saturday Night Live or vented their spleen on Twitter.

History has vindicated the super-sized ego of Pope, Swift, and Gay by raising them into the canon and virtually erasing the targets of their snark. Most of the Grub Street figures mocked in The Dunciad can no longer boast name recognition but are, ironically, still studied for their roles in the Scriblerian poetry that humiliated them.

Adding to this irony, this website attempts to resurrect some of these Grub Street figures and events in order to provide historical context for a reading of The Dunciad. The following pages offer examples of writers, publishers, literary critics and public figures whose fame burned brightly enough (even if not long) for Scriblerian jealousy to be aroused.

About the curators

This online exhibition is a capstone project for an English Honors undergraduate research seminar on “The Scriblerians” taught by professor Janine Barchas at the University of Texas at Austin, during Spring 2023. The students constructed the following corners of the exhibition from blocks of independent research.

DUNCE PUBLISHERS by Bethany Roberts, Rachel Rodriguez, and Ariadne Salinas

DUNCE CRITICS by Emma Guerrero, Malorie Jackson, and Nicolas Silva

DUNCE WRITERS by Bee Barlow, Katherine Deberry, Celeste Hoover, and Ari Hosek

PUBLIC DUNCES by Hayle Chen, Caroline Harrison, Carson McNabb, and Ella Wisdom