The_Select_Society

The Select Society

The Select Society, established as The St. Giles Society but soon renamed, was an intellectual society in 18th century Edinburgh, Scotland.^[1]

The Select Society initially had fifteen members who included:

By the end of its first year, The Select Society had eighty three members.^[4] Some years later, some of the members established The Poker Club^[5].

^ Emerson, Roger L. The Social Composition of Enlightened Scotland: The Select Society of Edinburgh, 1754-1764. (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century) (1973)
^ Significant Scots: George Drummond (html). Electric Scotland.
^ David Denby (11 October 2004). Northern Lights: How modern life emerged from eighteenth-century Edinburgh (html). The New Yorker. Review of James Buchan's Crowded With Genius (Capital of the Mind in the UK). “[p. 3] A convivial bachelor, he [Hume] required company, preferably a dinner party at home (he prided himself on his “cookery”) or a debate at the Select Society, a group of fifty of Edinburgh’s most clubbable and erudite minds.”
^ The Select - A Brief History.
^ The Poker Club (1762–1784)