Lunar Society of Birmingham - Membership and Status

Membership and Status

The Lunar Society evolved through various degrees of organisation over a period of up to fifty years, but was only ever an informal group. No constitution, minutes, publications or membership lists survive from any period, and evidence of its existence and activities is found only in the correspondence and notes of those associated with it. Historians therefore disagree on what qualifies as membership of the Lunar Society, who can be considered to have been members, and even when the society can be said to have existed. Josiah Wedgwood, for example, is described by some commentators as being one of five "principal members" of the society, while others consider that he "cannot be recognized as full member" at all. Dates given for the establishment of the society range from "sometime before 1760" to 1775. Some historians argue that it had ceased to exist by 1791; others that it was still operating as late as 1813.

Despite this uncertainty, fourteen individuals have been identified as having verifiably attended Lunar Society meetings regularly over a long period during its most productive eras: these are Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Samuel Galton, Jr., James Keir, Joseph Priestley, William Small, Jonathan Stokes, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, John Whitehurst and William Withering.

While the society's meetings provided its name and social focus, however, they were relatively unimportant in its activities, and far more activity and communication took place outside the meetings themselves – members local to Birmingham were in almost daily contact, more distant ones in correspondence at least weekly. A more loosely defined group has therefore been identified over a wider geographical area and longer time period, who attended meetings occasionally and who corresponded or co-operated regularly with multiple other members on group activities. These include Richard Kirwan, John Smeaton, Henry Moyes, John Michell, Pieter Camper, R. E. Raspe, John Baskerville, Thomas Beddoes, John Wyatt, William Thomson, Cyril V. Jackson, Jean-André Deluc, John Wilkinson, John Ash, Samuel More, Robert Bage, James Brindley, Ralph Griffiths, John Roebuck, Thomas Percival, Joseph Black, James Hutton, Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Banks, William Herschel, Daniel Solander, John Warltire, George Fordyce, Alexander Blair, Samuel Parr, Louis Joseph d'Albert d'Ailly, the seventh Duke of Chaulnes, Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, Grossart de Virly,, Johann Gottling. and Joseph Wright

This lack of a defined membership has led some historians to criticise a Lunar Society "legend", leading people to "confuse it and its efforts with the general growth of intellectual and economic activities in the provinces of eighteenth century Britain". Others have seen this both as real and as one of the society's main strengths: a paper read at the Science Museum in London in 1963 claimed that "of all the provincial philosophical societies it was the most important, perhaps because it was not merely provincial. All the world came to Soho to meet Boulton, Watt or Small, who were acquainted with the leading men of Science throughout Europe and America. Its essential sociability meant that any might be invited to attend its meetings."