The Royal Society of Literature
| Abbreviation | RSL |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1820 |
| Type | Learned society |
| Headquarters | Somerset House, London |
|
President
|
Colin Thubron CBE |
|
Patron
|
Queen Elizabeth II |
| Website | http://rsliterature.org/ |
The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society. It was founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent".
The society's first president was Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St David's (who was later translated as Bishop of Salisbury). The society maintains its current level of about 500 Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature: generally 14 new fellows are elected annually, who are accorded the privilege of using the post-nominal letters FRSL.
Past fellows include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, J. R. R. Tolkien, W. B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Koestler, Chinua Achebe, Robert Ardrey, and P.J. Kavanagh. Present Fellows include Margaret Atwood, David Hare, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, Paul Muldoon, Zadie Smith, Nadeem Aslam, Sarah Waters and J. K. Rowling. A newly created fellow inscribes his or her name on the society's official roll using either Byron's pen or T.S. Eliot's fountain pen, which replaced Dickens's quill in 2013.
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