The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Scriblerus Club
English literary group formed about 1713 to satirize “all the false tastes in learning.” Among its chief members were Arbuthnot, Gay, Thomas Parnell, Pope, and Swift. Meetings of the club were discontinued after 1714. The club’s major production, “Memoirs of … Martinus Scriblerus,” was published in Pope’s prose works in 1741, although it is considered to be primarily the work of Arbuthnot. The influence of the club is seen in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Pope’s Dunciad.
