Café society was the collective escription for the so-called "beautiful people" and "bright young things" who gathered in fashionable cafes and restaurants in Paris, London, Rome or New York, beginning in the late 1800s. Lucius Beebe, noted American author, journalist, gourmand, and railroad enthusiast is generally credited with creating the term "café society," which he chronicled in his weekly column, This New York, for the New York Herald Tribune during the 1920s and 1930s.