One of the first all-women discussion clubs, it was formed in Cambridge in 1890 by twelve university wives and their friends: Caroline Jebb, Mary Paley Marshall, Ida Darwin, Eleanor Sidgwick, Kathleen Lyttelton, Ellen Darwin, Mary Ward, Louise Creighton, Margaret Verrall, Maud Darwin, Fanny Prothero and Eliza Von Hügel. The surviving members of the group met every year until the outbreak of war in 1914.