Book Review | The Club

The Club - Johnson Boswell and Friends - BUY NOW

THE CLUB: Johnson, Boswell and the Friends Who Shaped An Age | Leo Damrosch, Yale University, (2020), 448p.

The Club is a decently written and engaging historical work that delves into the world of the 18th-century Club known as the Literary Club of London. Meeting almost weekly at Turk’s Head Tavern, this small invite-only Club became a breeding ground for rich cultural expressions that the author argues shaped an age. 

This book focuses on the two founders: Samuel Johnson and his equally famous biographer, James Boswell. Other club members in the pages include painter Joshua Reynolds, statesman Edmund Burke, poet Oliver Goldsmith, scholar Edmund Malone, painter Sir Joshua Kirby, legal scholar Sir William Jones, historian Edward Gibbon, and philosopher Adam Smith.

The personal lives of Johnson and Boswell get way too much attention. Are the compelling lives of these great minds made more accessible or illuminated by chronicling in vivid detail the numerous (hundreds) prostitutes and affairs the married Boswell had? Although, his dalliance with Rousseau’s girlfriend was interesting.

The founding charter of The Club commissioned it as a “convivial and interesting friends who would spend an evening together once a week.” Their Latin motto, “esto perpetual,” let it be perpetual, was nearly realized.

Johnson once remarked, “Men need to be reminded more often than informed.” This tome provides a reminder of the impressive outcomes that follow when remarkable creativity collides in habitual proximity.| Leo Damrosch, Yale University, (2020), 448p.

The Club is a decently written and engaging historical work that delves into the world of the 18th-century Club known as the Literary Club of London. Meeting almost weekly at Turk’s Head Tavern, this small invite-only Club became a breeding ground for rich cultural expressions that the author argues shaped an age. 

This book focuses on the two founders: Samuel Johnson and his equally famous biographer, James Boswell. Other club members in the pages include painter Joshua Reynolds, statesman Edmund Burke, poet Oliver Goldsmith, scholar Edmund Malone, painter Sir Joshua Kirby, legal scholar Sir William Jones, historian Edward Gibbon, and philosopher Adam Smith.

The personal lives of Johnson and Boswell get way too much attention. Are the compelling lives of these great minds made more accessible or illuminated by chronicling in vivid detail the numerous (hundreds) prostitutes and affairs the married Boswell had? Although, his dalliance with Rousseau’s girlfriend was interesting.

The founding charter of The Club commissioned it as a “convivial and interesting friends who would spend an evening together once a week.” Their Latin motto, “esto perpetual,” let it be perpetual, was nearly realized.

Johnson once remarked, “Men need to be reminded more often than informed.” This tome provides a reminder of the impressive outcomes that follow when remarkable creativity collides in habitual proximity.

The Club - Johnson Boswell and Friends - BUY NOW