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

Author: Leo Damrosch

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 15 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/26/2019

Synopsis

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 tavernIn 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.

About Leo Damrosch

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.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Reviews

Goodreads review by W.D.

Really, really enjoyed Professor Damrosch's tour and company. As a now-budding 18C dilletante, I say that this is the perfect book to accompany any reading of Boswell's justly celebrated The Life of Samuel Johnson. What it isn't, though, is a thoroughly rigorous or exhaustive exhuming of the careers......more

Quotes

“Damrosch brilliantly brings together the members’ voices… [A] stellar book.” New York Times Book Review

“Impeccable scholarship at the service of absolute lucidity…Learned, penetrating, a pleasure to read…[A] splendid book.” Wall Street Journal

“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.” Washington Post

“A group portrait of the extraordinary ‘Club’…whose work, lives, and ideas resonate still.” Harvard Magazine

“Masterful…Late eighteenth century Britain comes brilliantly alive in a vibrant intellectual history.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“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.” AudioFile

“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.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Damrosch’s account reminds readers why this circle of creativity continues to fascinate.” Library Journal

“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.” BookRiot

“Brilliant, lucid, and enjoyable…With perfectly chosen anecdotes, The Club vividly evokes the period.” Norma Clarke, author of Brothers of the Quill

Awards

  • Book Riot Pick
  • Amazon.com Bestseller
  • Publishers Weekly Pick
  • New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
  • Newsday Pick
  • Publishers Weekly Best Book
  • New York Times Best Book
  • Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books
  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize
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