The Club : Johnson, Boswell, and the friends who shaped an age Cover Image

Book

The Club : Johnson, Boswell, and the friends who shaped an age / Leo Damrosch.

Summary:

"In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club." In this captivating book, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters. With the friendship of the "odd couple" Samuel Johnson and James Boswell at the heart of his narrative, Damrosch conjures up the precarious, exciting, and often brutal world of late eighteenth-century Britain. This is the story of an extraordinary group of people whose ideas helped to shape their age, and our own"--Dust jacket.

Record details

ISBN: 9780300217902
ISBN: 0300217900
Physical Description: vi, 473 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), map, portraits ; 25 cm
Publisher: New Haven ; Yale University Press, [2019]
Copyright: ©2019

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 407-443) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Prologue -- Johnson before Boswell : the years of struggle -- Johnson before Boswell : fame at last -- Boswell before Johnson : setting out for the wide world -- Boswell before Johnson : the search for self -- The fateful meeting -- Boswell abroad -- The Club is born -- Sir Joshua Reynolds -- Edmund Burke -- David Garrick -- The spirit of mirth -- A new life at Streatham -- Boswell in Scotland-and Stratford -- Among the farthest Hebrides --The widening river -- Empire -- Adam Smith -- Edward Gibbon -- Infidels and believers -- Johnson nearing the end -- Boswell on the downhill slope -- Epilogue -- Appendix : members of the Club in its first twenty years.