The Rhymers' Club
W. B. Yeats, Ernest Rhys and T. W. Rolleston founded the Rhymers’ Club in 1890 in London as an informal club for young poets and writers. The club met in an upper room at the Chesire Cheese on Fleet Street until 1894. Yeats wrote, “We read our poems to one another and talked criticism and drank a little wine.”
The membership of the club shifted over the years, but included John Davidson, Ernest Dowson, Edwin Ellis, George Arthur Greene, Arthur Cecil Hillier, Herbert Horne, Lionel Johnson, Richard Le Gallienne, Victor Plarr, Ernest Radford, Ernest Rhys, T. W. Rolleston, Arthur Symons, John Todhunter, Oscar Wilde, and W. B. Yeats. Yeats later referred to many of these poets as “The Tragic Generation.”
The Book of the Rhymers’ Club
London: Elkin Mathews, 1892;
reprint, New York: Garland, 1977.
Golda Meir Library
PR 1223 .R52 1977
The Second Book of the Rhymers’ Club
London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane, 1894;
reprint, New York: Garland, 1977.
Golda Meir Library
PR 1223 .R52 1977
Two collections of poems by members of the Rhymers’ Club were published, one (450 copies) in 1892 and the other (650 copies) in 1894. Both were reprinted in 1977.
The poets represented in these volumes were, according to Yeats, “the poets with whom I learned my trade.”