The early nineteenth century was an age of letters; the written word was everywhere, in both published and private form. The construction of a reliable postal service made personal communication easier than ever before. On the wider public stage, the increase in the production of books, newspapers, periodicals and other printed matter created a heady atmosphere in which ideas and opinions could be made concrete with relative ease and swiftly transmitted to a public eager for the newest information. In this fertile environment of literary possibilities it is perhaps unsurprising to find that the men who made up the Roxburghe Club were authors, almost to a man, although this aspect of its membership has seemingly been overlooked.

This chapter looks at the texts written by club members in some detail, and illustrates how many of the men who belonged to the Roxburghe Club were not simply consumers of printed matter but also the producers of a surprising variety of publications. It is, of course, to be expected that in any large group of individuals there will be a distribution of abilities across a given spectrum, and the Roxburghe Club was no exception. The literary distinction of the members ranged from professional authors like Sir Walter Scott through to enthusiastic and often surprisingly talented, but strictly private, writers like the Duke of Devonshire. Between these extremes were gentlemanly semiprofessionals, scholars writing on academic subjects, professional men writing poetry as a hobby. There were also men, like Dibdin and Haslewood, who were employed in other fields but who made a significant part of their income or reputation from literary pursuits. Some members of the club, such as E. V. Utterson, did not write anything themselves (beyond introductory material) but instead preferred to act as editor, on their own behalf or in the employ of others, and in a related vein are those members who carried out labours of interpretation and transliteration such as George Neville Grenville who, as master of Magdalene, Cambridge, was instrumental in the efforts to decipher Samuel Pepys's shorthand, an undertaking which eventually enabled the diary to be published in 1825. Lastly, the Roxburghe members’ literary offerings sometimes inhabited the interesting area that lay between personal letters and commercial publication, in which pieces of writing that originated in private correspondence, or formed open letters, were published for public consumption, often as part of an ongoing intellectual dialogue.