Belfast Literary Society

Its first meeting was held in the old Exchange and Assembly Rooms on the junction of Bridge, North, Waring and Rosemary Streets.

[1][2] The members met "on the first Monday before each full moon" to hear and discuss papers on "literature, science of the arts".

[5] In 1803, an original member, the botanist and former United Irishman John Templeton, withdrew rather than associate Dr. MacDonnell who had signed a subscription for the capture of the unreformed rebel Thomas Russell.

Instead with Templeton and a radical linen merchant, John Hancock, he founded the Belfast Monthly Magazine as an alternative expression of cultural and intellectual life in the town.

William Richardson on a proposed species of winter hay, was pointedly dedicated to Bruce as an educator of "the youth of Belfast in the principles of religion, learning and loyalty".