the Souls

In a specific sense: an informal late-Victorian social and intellectual circle, prominent from the 1880s and centred on aristocratic families including the Balfours, Lytteltons, Tennants, and Wyndhams. Arthur Balfour, nicknamed ‘King Arthur’, was a central figure. Men and women met in London and at country houses, favouring conversation, literature, philosophy, and games over the more conventional pursuits of fashionable society.