Thackeray Pendennis||passage=Having a dinner-party at his rooms to entertain some friends from London, nothing would satisfy Mr. Foker but painting Mr. Buck’s door vermilion, in which freak he was caught by the proctors …|19
1851, A Little Stimulant — A Temperance Tale, Walter, yet new in his spousedom, was more amenable than an older hand ; but Rosa had no want of anxiety in this her first dinner-party.
Le Fanu House|text='She knows well enough I like her,' so his liking said in confidence to his vanity, and even he hardly overheard them talk; 'better a great deal than I knew it myself, till old Strafford got together this confounded stupid dinner-party (he caught Miss Chattesworth glancing at him with a peculiar look of enquiry). Why the plague did he ask me here? it was Puddock's turn, and he likes venison and compots, ...
1883, The Silverado Squatters Chapter Napa wine, If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly and storing reminiscences &emdash; for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect — if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! Now we begin to have compunctions, and look back at the brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties, where the guests drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even the schoolboy "took his whack," like liquorice water.
1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, We gave such dinner-parties as our commissariat allowed; the menu was simplicity itself - " blanket " for every course, cunningly disguised as soup, entree, and, I was going to say, joint.
Lindsay Age of Consent|year=1962|page=167|passage="Oysters and whitebait and a tin of pate, peaches and a pineapple and one of our fowls; well, a woman might like to give herself a nice little dinner once in a while, but not a bottle of wine at four shillings and a three and sixpenny tin of cigarettes, for I never will believe she's took to drink and smoking of a suddent, so own up, Mr. Widgett, it's a little dinner-party on your account."
1966 , Eric Walter White , Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works Chapter Part One: The Manâ€, “10. The Return of the Native (1962)
