In the early twentieth century, the priest and novelist Canon Patrick Sheehan wrote a fictional account of an intellectual society in Cork. Founded through the exertions of a priest, a Catholic doctor and his wife, the society aimed at a mixture of social integration, entertainment and self-education. The participants included a college professor, an English engineer, two single women, the local bank manager and his wife. They had been selected not just for their intellectual attributes, but for their ability to contribute to providing an acceptable social mix. As the doctor's wife remarks, advocating for further Protestant members, ‘I hate this spirit of intolerance amongst Catholics. Really, Protestants are quite as nice, and sometimes much superior.’ Despite such precautions regarding the admission of members, the society's history followed a familiar trajectory from an enthusiastic foundation, through struggles with member fatigue (the ladies crave dancing and music) to dissolution. Each stage was characterized by a tension in aims: the desires to create an intellectual community, to overcome political and religious divides and to provide amusement often clash with one another. Sheehan's The Intellectuals drew on his personal experience as a member of one of Ireland's oldest scientific societies, the Scientific and Literary Society of Cork. His preface claimed that the book would provide a blueprint for the future of Irish society when ‘the barriers of racial and sectarian prejudices may be broken down’ through the development of intellectual pursuits.

Voluntary societies, and particularly scientific societies, are representative of the Victorian urge to combine recreation with higher purposes such as reform and education.