The Club : Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age / Leo Damrosch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Damrosch, Leopold, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784.

Johnson, Samuel.

Boswell, James, 1740-1795. 7Intellectuals.

Authors--Biography.

Authors.

Societies--England--London--History--18th century.

Societies.

Intellectuals--Great Britain--Biography.

Intellectuals.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--18th century.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--History--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 473 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color), map, portraits

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Prize-winning biographer Leo Damrosch tells the story of "the Club," a group of extraordinary writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1. Johnson before Boswell: The Years of Struggle

2. Johnson before Boswell: Fame at Last

3. Boswell before Johnson: Setting Out for the Wide World

4. Boswell before Johnson: The Search for Self

5. The Fateful Meeting

6. Boswell Abroad

7. The Club Is Born

8. Sir Joshua Reynolds

9. Edmund Burke

10. David Garrick

11. The Spirit of Mirth

12. A New Life at Streatham

13. Boswell in Scotland-and Stratford

14. Among the Farthest Hebrides

15. The Widening River

16. Empire

17. Adam Smith

18. Edward Gibbon

19. Infidels and Believers

20. Johnson Nearing the End

21. Boswell on the Downhill Slope

Epilogue

Appendix: Members of the Club in Its First Twenty Years

Short Titles

Notes

Illustration Credits

Index

Notes:

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

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780300244960

0300244967

OCLC:

1143845795