A literary circle or coterie, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, is a "small group of writers (and others) bound together more by friendship and habitual association than by a common literary cause or style that might unite a school or movement. The term often has pejorative connotations of exclusive cliquishness".^[1]

A literary circle differs from a writing circle, in that the latter usually includes only writers and the focus is on the process of writing. A literary circle also differs from a literary society, in that the latter need not contain any writers; members of a literary society come together to discuss or celebrate literary works or authors.

Famous or noteworthy examples include:

• Wilton Circle, UK, 16th-century group centred on Mary Sidney
• The Muiderkring, Netherlands, early 17th century
• Wuppertal poets' circle, Germany, 1850s
• Streatham Worthies, UK, late 18th century
• The Bloomsbury Group, UK, c. 1907 to 1930
• The Mutual Admiration Society, UK, 1910s
• Whitechapel Boys, UK, early 20th century
• Algonquin Roundtable, USA, 1919–1929
• Florida group, Buenos Aires, 1920s
• Stratford-on-Odéon, France, 1920s
• El Floridita literary circle, Cuba, 1920s, which included Ernest Hemingway
• The Harlem Renaissance, USA, 1920s and 1930s
• The Inklings, UK, c. 1930s and 1940s
• South Side Writers Group, USA, 1930s and 1940s
• Budh Sabha,^[2] India, 1932 —
• Misty poets, China, 1970s to 1990s

• Literary society

• Baird, Ileana. Social Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century: Clubs, Literary Salons, Textual Coteries. Academia (Downloadable PDF)
• Bowers, Will, and Hannah Leah Crummé, eds. Re-evaluating the Literary Coterie, 1580–1830: From Sidney to Blackwood's. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: tps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54553-4
• Fulford, Tim. Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries: The Dialect of the Tribe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137518897
• Brady, Deirdre F. Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers' Club (1933-1958). Liverpool University Press, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781789622461.001.0001
• Schellenberg, Betty A. Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture 1740–1790. Cambridge University Press, 2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316423202.001
• Scuriatti, Laura, ed. Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds: Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community. Peter Lang, 2019. DOI:10.3726/b11511

• "The greatest literary groups in history". www.penguin.co.uk. Penguin Books. 2020-07-23. Retrieved 2023-01-25.
• Gerhaeusser, Laura (2020-05-29). "Great Minds Come Together - Literary Groups". centmagazine.co.uk. Cent Magazine. Retrieved 2023-01-25.