The Club

Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age

By: Leo Damrosch

Narrated by: Simon Vance

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 audiobook, 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 18th-century Britain. This is the story of an extraordinary group of people whose ideas helped to shape their age - and our own.

©2019 Leo Damrosch (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The rise and fall of brilliant men

For literary snobs who revel in the English language
Collateral gain. A powerful look at English life for the privileged and less so in the 18th century

Informative and entertaining.

I enjoyed this book very much. While not exhaustive, it is an enjoyable overview of this amazing group people.

Entertains and informative

This is a well research book by a Harvard professor and I ration is wonderful and breaks into a Scottish accent highly recommended

Wonderful visit to the literary past

By intertwining the mini biographies of his main characters, Professor Damrosch has given us deep insight into the literary past. The characters come alive in discussions and conversations and we learn plenty of interesting facts along the way. For instance, most people in the 18th Century did not how to swim.

Impressive work of history that runs cold

I listened to this book based on the recommendation of a respected critic and having had a passing interest in Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, but no real experience with them. Author Leo Damrosch is a true scholar, it seems he has read and fully digested virtually every word written by these 18th century writers and the intellectual giants who joined their dinner club, including Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon and others. Damrosch also has a firm and nimble grasp of the geopolitical realities of that period and how these luminaries viewed and debated the great issues, including such wide-ranging matters as England’s relations to Ireland, India and the New World. He is also able to detail fascinating minutia, such as that Edward Gibbon’s younger brother was also named Edward, because their parents fully expected the sickly older Edward to die. And yet, with all of this erudition, one comes away with a, at best, cold feeling towards Boswell, a drunkard, connoisseur of prostitutes, strong defender of slavery, philanderer, whose bizarre “daddy issues” caused him to ingratiate himself with the much older and austere Johnson. As to Johnson, at least in this recording, his alleged wicked wit and famous spontaneous quips seem sort of “meh” and whatever intangibles made him such an appealing person to others of his day simply does not come across to 21st century readers. Tellingly, both Johnson and Boswell apparently looked down on Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon. Maybe they were so busy impressing each other and their society friends that they missed something? Finally, of all of the characters, the one who stands out, at least in this telling, for courage, integrity and strength of character, is Hester Thrale, although unfortunately her life is detailed more as a "supporting player" presumably because she was not a member of the all-male Club.

Andrew Millee

An excellent complement to the life of Johnnson which I listen to over thick three months in an audible edition.

Gripping Portrait of an Age

What delightful, brilliant characters! Gives a good picture of the 18th century through entertaining & insightful pictures of its literary, economic & political giants: Samuel Johnson (first English Dictionary), Adam Smith (founder of economics), Edmund Burke (statesman & advocated for American independence), Francis “Fannie” Burney (novelist), and many others. Doctor Johnson and his lecherous side-kick and biographer, James Boswell, weave their way through this book.
It’s probably most interesting to people who have heard these names before, but it also works as an introduction to the intellectual world of the Age of Enlightenment. My only quibble is that it pays only glancing attention to David Hume, upon whose work all of modern western philosophy rests.
But, perhaps, the author wanted to keep it light.

Many Delicious Slices of Historical Lives

"The Club" contains delicious slices of historical British lives .... James Boswell's being the most unappetizing. A well researched and written tour de force of a fascinating era of London history.

Colorin in the Astounding Members of "TheClub"

No bibliophiile should miss this. Tho' long ,it's worth the insight into a rich historical era

"Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me.

"Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both."
-- Samuel Johnson to James Boswell

The Club is a frame biography. But it is certainly more than its parts. At its core, Damrosch nails together small biographies of Johnson, Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbons, and other minor characters/members of "the Club." But this book goes beyond this. It is also a history of the age, using the members of the club as a lens into England in the mid-to-late 18th Century. And since the membership of the club involved writers, poets, historians, economists, artists, actors, etc., it allows Damrosch the ability to peruse the age from multiple perspectives with Johnson and Boswell being the gravity at the center of the book. Damrosch also does well to include the important women during this time AND to not sugar-coat the poor behavior of many of the men (especially Boswell). It is a balanced work whose narrative keeps pace with the wit of its subjects. I came here after reading Vol X last year of Durant's Story of Civilization Rousseau and Revolution. Both do a good job of surveying many of the important minds of the time.

Next up will be larger works by Boswell, Johnson, Smith, Burke, etc., and bigger biographies of the same.