East Baton Rouge Parish Library

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

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

collective biography

portraitsplatesillustrations

index present

non fiction

The Club

dictionariesbibliography

1089126323

Leo Damrosch

Johnson, Boswell, and the friends who shaped an age

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

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