Within the charm of the drawing-room, officials of the Government, legislators, writers, artists, scientists and private men and women met together, dropping, for the time being, all titles of distinction and becoming simply companions under the Egis of Learning."

In 1873, Olive Risley Seward discussed forming a group to hold regular social and literary gatherings meetings with two of her friends, Esmeralda Boyle and Sara Carr Upton.

[13] The meeting was held "at my mother's house, 723 Twenty-first Street, in our back parlor," wrote Esmeralda Boyle afterwards.

John Wesley Powell (member from 1883 to 1902) was director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, where he led a team that seriously documented the culture of Native Americans for the first time.

On the Society's 25th Anniversary in 1899, a longtime member, Ainsworth Rand Spofford, the sixth Librarian of Congress, read a paper before the Society reflecting on the group's experiences in which he recalled, In our evening exercises there has prevailed a varied range and compass of topics, fitted to bring out earnest thought and many-sided comments.

Essays, criticism, poems, short stories, reviews of noted books, characterizations of great writers, social studies, descriptive sketches and brief discussions, occupy the hour.

History repeated itself last year, when our present First Lady was introduced to the club, and in her usual cordial, thoughtful way, entertained the members at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.

A member list for 1882 is also included on pages 54–55 of A tribute of respect from the Literary Society of Washington, to its late President, James Abram Garfield.

[25] Over the last 140 years, members of the Literary Society have published hundreds of books, from Olive Risley Seward's Travels Around the World, a bestseller in 1873 coauthored with her stepfather William Seward, to Judith Martin's Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (2005) and John F. Ross's War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier (2009).