THE COACHES COFFEE HOUSE

Wanted to make the lovable stuff I found on Google available to those who are not in the Coach Master class because they, along with the students in the program, helped me out with so many great suggestions.

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BarbaraSher January 24, 2010 at 9:59 am [edit]

How about Coaches Coffee House? Here’s what I found on google: Please note that each place first had a presiding person — in this course it’s obviously the experienced coach (me — not a presiding genius like John Dryden :-) ).

It’s a little long because I wanted to include The Lion’s Head – a place where you can deposit your writing. For purposes of easy maneuvering, post in the Lion’s Head a brief abstract of what you wrote and a link to where it can be found.

Read on:

In 1660 as coffee houses became more and more popular each began to attract a certain crowd and began to house certain types of people. The Soldiers could be found at Old or Young Man’s, people of the Whig party at St. James or Smyrna Coffee House, and people of the Tory party at Cocoa-Tree or Ozinda’s. People involved in literature would be found at Will’s.

Will’s was a coffee house owned by William Urwin, but made famous by its constant patron and its presiding literary genius, John Dryden. Located in Russel Street, Covent Garden, one of the most fashionable parts of London, this coffee house became a hub of literary critiques and discussions that inspired many famous authors, leaving many of them in debt to both Will’s and Dryden for what they learned or absorbed while attending such a discussion within Will’s. One of these legendary writers, Alexander Pope, first visited Will’s at the ripe age of twelve years old. In fact, Pope’s famous Rape of the Lock rose out of coffee house gossip. Will’s and Dryden also had a great influence during this time on William Congreve and Joseph Addison. It was not long before Will’s became known as the Coffee house of the “Wit’s”…

By 1712 …The community of writers found their new place to gather at Button’s Coffee House, also located in Russel Street, Covent Garden. Joseph Addison initially was responsible for the popularity of Button’s, however; the positive response and attendance of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift helped raise the coffee houses popularity as well.

Still, Button’s is perhaps most remembered for the Lion’s Head Letter Box, where people could drop pieces they had written for publication in The Guardian, a local newspaper. Of this Lion’s head Addison says:

This head is to open a most wide and voracious mouth, which shall take in such letters and papers as are conveyed to me by my correspondents…

Whatever the lion swallows I shall digest for the use of the public…it shall be set up in Button’s coffee-house in Convent-garden, who is directed to shew the way to the lion’s head, and to instruct young authors how to convey his works in the mouth of it with safety and secrecy.