Membership
The Club has had a total of 344 members since its foundation. The circle has always been an exclusive one, with just one "black ball" (negative vote) being enough to exclude an applicant. Since 1839 the number of members at any one time has been limited to forty.
A photograph exists of the membership in 1892, including the Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and anthropologist Andrew Lang, as well as American poet James Russell Lowell, Alfred Henry Huth, and Simon Watson Taylor. James Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne, was then President.
The first female member was Mary, Viscountess Eccles, elected in 2005. The most recently elected member, in 2011, is the Australian comedian Barry Humphries. The President since 1998 has been Max Wyndham, 2nd Baron Egremont.
Read more about this topic: Roxburghe Club
Famous quotes containing the word membership:
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)