Coffee houses

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  • Intro

    While today, tea is the drink most associated with the English, from the mid 1600s until the late 1700s hot chocolate and coffee were the more popular drinks. Newly imported from Africa and South America, the drinks became fashionable novelties in the 1660s. The first coffee house was opened in London in 1663, and others soon followed. Coffee houses were hubs of social activity, particularly popular with businessmen, politicians, stock market traders and intellectuals. In this poem of 1665, a variety of characters including a player, a country clown and a fanatic all sit within a coffee house, the poet describing the diversity of the scene:

    'Here you're not thrust into a Box

    As Taverns do to catch the Fox

    But as from the top of Paul's high steeple,

    The whole City's viewed, even so all people

    May be seen.'

     

    Shelfmark: 1162626.bb.11.

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