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Sign up todayThe Club
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Learn morePrize-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.
Leo Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. His previous works include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World and Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake.
Simon Vance is a critically acclaimed narrator who has recorded over eight hundred audiobooks and has received over fifty Earphones Awards. A twelve-time Audie Award winner and frequent finalist, he has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice, an AudioFile Best Voice, and the first Booklist Voice of Choice. A former BBC Radio presenter and newsreader in London, he currently lives in California, where he also pursues stage and television acting.
Reviews
“Damrosch brilliantly brings together the members’ voices… [A] stellar book.”
“Impeccable scholarship at the service of absolute lucidity…Learned, penetrating, a pleasure to read…[A] splendid book.”
“An exceptionally lively introduction to late eighteenth-century English thought and literature…Relates many of the best anecdotes and verbal bonbons associated with Johnson or his friends…Magnificently entertaining.”
“A group portrait of the extraordinary ‘Club’…whose work, lives, and ideas resonate still.”
“Masterful…Late eighteenth century Britain comes brilliantly alive in a vibrant intellectual history.”
“Simon Vance is a master narrator and a highly suitable choice for this lively history…The narrative is rich, insightful, often quite bawdy, and performed with perfect expression, grace, and understanding.”
“Delightfully captures the bonds of friendship and competition…in his rollickingly entertaining look at late-18th-century London’s liveliest, most dazzlingly witty social club.”
“Damrosch’s account reminds readers why this circle of creativity continues to fascinate.”
“So many of the ideas circulating in eighteenth-century London…shaped the world we live in today. This book is an indispensable examination of an uncertain, rapidly-changing, hugely influential place and time.”
“Brilliant, lucid, and enjoyable…With perfectly chosen anecdotes, The Club vividly evokes the period.”
“Leo Damrosch’s book is an extraordinary achievement. A lively and engaging account of the coming together of a group of famously gifted individuals—the Club, a virtual microcosm of the vibrant world of mid-to-late eighteenth-century London.”
“Damrosch’s glorious study takes us on a brilliantly animated Grand Tour of the whole Johnsonian universe, with its ever-expanding galaxy of stellar personalities…Shrewd, good-natured, and endlessly informative, Damrosch makes a spell-binding guide.”
“[An] atmospheric new book…In clear, engaging prose, Damrosch ushers us into ‘the club,’ i.e., the Turk’s Head Tavern in London, where members like Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell joined Johnson for food, drink, and, perhaps more than anything else, intelligent talk.
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