Lately, I've been enjoying "The Lunar Men," by Jenny Uglow. It's a rather long, somewhat rambling, but very well written account of a group of men who met during the 1700's timing their meetings around the full moon, as most people did before street lighting became a thing. Some of the most prominent were Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgewood, and James Preistley. A somewhat diverse group of business tycoons, industrialists, natural philosophers, (what we'd now call scientists,) artists and doctors.
They've all been dead for over 200 years, but they had considerable influence on their times, much of which remains to this day.