Amazon.com description: Product Description: Clubs and societies emerged as a distinct feature of the Irish social landscape from the end of the 17th Century, and flourished in the 18th Century. The most notable early organization was the Dublin Philosophical Society, founded in the 1680s. But it was merely the first manifestation of a phenomenon that produced a vast array of clubs and societies shaping social, political, and intellectual life in the 18th Century. Some - the Hell-Fire Club, the Free Masons, the Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick, and the RDS - have left a legacy that continues to echo. However, there is a vast array of philanthropic and charitable bodies, intellectual societies, political bodies such as the Aldermen of Skinners Alley, dining and drinking clubs, sports and hunting clubs, and many more that have been all but forgotten. The contributions in this book reveal the richness of the associational impulse in 18th-Century Ireland.