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The Club by Leo Damrosch audiobook

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

By Leo Damrosch
Read by Simon Vance

Blackstone Publishing 9780300217902
15.02 Hours • 1
Format : CD (In Stock)
  • 2 Formats: CD
  • 2 Formats: MP3 CD

  • Regular Price: $39.95

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    ISBN: 9781982664329

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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.

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Summary

Summary

One of the New York Times Top 10 Best Books of the Year

A #1 Amazon.com bestseller in British & Irish Literary Criticism

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography

One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2019 in Nonfiction

A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year in Nonfiction

A BookRiot Pick of 7 Great New LIterary Biographies

A Newsday Pick of the Week

A Publishers Weekly Pick of Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2019

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.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“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
“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.” —William C. Dowling, Rutgers University
“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.” —Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder
“[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. —FineBooks&Collections.com

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Author

Author Bio: Leo Damrosch

Author Bio: 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.

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Details

Details

Available Formats : CD, MP3 CD
Category: Nonfiction/Biography
Runtime: 15.02
Audience: Adult
Language: English

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