They met for lunch every day at a round table at New York City's Algonquin Hotel and traded quips, many of them still repeated today.

There was no formal membership so people came and went but the primary early members included Alexander Woollcott, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Edna Ferber, Franklin Pierce Adams and Harpo Marx. Others, including actors and entertainers, visited. Since some of the members were popular columnists who repeated some of the conversations in their columns, the quips got wide circulation. Sometimes they were unkind.

One story is that when Dorothy Parker was informed about the death of President Calvin Coolidge, she replied, "How can they tell?"