tea-circles

Updated: July 1, 2026

He had, however, to leave the university, for Nathanael's fate had created a great sensation; and the opinion was pretty generally expressed that it was an imposture altogether unpardonable to have smuggled a wooden puppet instead of a living person into intelligent tea-circles, for Olimpia had been present at several with success.

E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) Hoffmann - Weird Tales. Vol. I

So in universities, and all manner of dames' and other schools, of the very highest class as of the very lowest; and Society at large, when we enter there, confirms with all its brilliant review-articles, successful publications, intellectual tea-circles, literary gazettes, parliamentary eloquences, the grand lesson we had. Other lesson in fact we have none, in these times.

Thomas Carlyle - Latter-Day Pamphlets