The term refers to a group of witty writers, critics, actors, and other New York celebrities who met regularly for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel between 1919 and 1929. Established by a few members in June 1919 upon their return from World War I (some having worked on the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes), the Round Table had no formal membership procedures, so the regulars, both men and women, changed from time to time. Among those names most associated with the Round Table were several playwrights, including George S. Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Marc Connelly, Robert E. Sherwood, and Donald Ogden Stewart, as well as critics (Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley), actors (Harpo Marx), composers (Deems Taylor), journalists, and sundry others in the literary and artistic world of the 1920s. Numerous books about the Round Table and its regulars have chronicled the witty repartee that made it a legendary center of the artistic intelligentsia of the era.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.