For centuries, writers have turned to coffee as an elixir, but the hot beverage’s history as a creative stimulant goes back much further.

The Grand Café in Oxford is considered the oldest coffeehouse in England. Opened in 1650, it was a meeting hub for some of the greatest thinkers of the day.

People of different backgrounds and expertise would get together and share their ideas—a caffeine-fueled creative environment that helped shape the modern world.

Not quite the silky smooth, blended beverages we know today, 17th-century coffee followed the recommendations of a Turkish proverb: Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love.

People flocked to coffee houses and couldn’t get enough of the so-called “bitter Mohammedan gruel”.

The craze spread like wildfire in London and by 1730, Londoners were consuming more coffee than anywhere on earth.

Coffeehouses were the commercial gathering places of their day. Lloyds insurance, the Spectator and Tatler magazine all started life in London coffee houses.

One coffee house, in particular, became synonymous with writing. Will’s Coffee-house in Covent Garden achieved fame as the regular haunt of the poet John Dryden (1631 – 1700) whose literary dominance earned him Poet Laureate in 1668 during a period known as the Age of Dryden.

Patrons debated whether Paradise Lost should have been written in rhyme and provided visitors ample entertainment of one sort or another—owing much to Dryden’s influence.

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