Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts)

The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in Boston, Massachusetts, of writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-19th century.

[2] By 1856, the organization became more structured with a loose set of rules, with monthly meetings held over dinner at the Parker House.

[2] The name was suggested by early member Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.[5] The original members of the group included Woodman, Louis Agassiz, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Senator George Frisbee Hoar, and James Russell Lowell.

[2] In the following years, membership was extended to Holmes, Cornelius Conway Felton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and William Hickling Prescott.

Ohio-native William Dean Howells was invited by James Russell Lowell in 1860 and recalled in a memoir that it seemed like a rite of passage.