The Literary Club, also known as Dr. Johnson's Club, was founded in London in 1764 by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Samuel Johnson. The Club originally had nine members who met weekly to discuss literary topics over dinner. Though Reynolds proposed the idea, Dr. Johnson became most closely associated with the Club. Other notable early members included Edmund Burke and James Boswell, whose biography of Dr. Johnson became a literary classic. The Club continues to operate to this day with over 100 members.

1. A PPT on Dr.Johnson & his Literary Club.
Indranil Sarkar
India.
22/6/20131

2. The Club or The Literary Club was a London dining Club. It was founded by Sir Joshua
Reynolds and Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1764.
Sir Joshua Reynolds was one of the most celebrated artists of the time while Dr.
Samuel Johnson is acclaimed as the most revered English litterateur of all times.
Initially it was founded with the objective of dining together and discussion on literary
matters while dining and drinking in the form of simple gossips.
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i.s

3. Sir Joshua
Reynolds RA FRS FRSA
(16 July 1723 – 23 February
1792)
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709
[O.S . 7 September] – 13 December
1784).
Link.www.wikipedia.org 6/2/20133

4.  The motto of the club was Esto perpetua
(Latin "Let it be perpetual") taken from the
state motto of Idaho.
 The words were uttered by the Venetian
theologian and mathematician Paolo Sarpi
(1552-1623), also known as Fra Paolo.
I.S
Link. www.wikipedia.org 6/2/20134

5. The Club:-
Initially, the club would meet one evening per week at seven, at the Turk's Head Inn in
Gerrard Street, Soho. Later, meetings were reduced to once per fortnight whilst
Parliament was in session, and were held at rooms in St James's Street. Though the
initial suggestion was Reynolds', it is Dr Johnson whose name is most closely associated
with the Club. John Timbs, in his Club Life in London, gives an account of the Club's
centennial dinner in 1864, which was celebrated at the Clarendon hotel.
Henry Hart Milman, the English historian, was the treasurer.
The Literary Club or The Club.
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6. The Club or The Literary Club
Members of the Literary Club. 6/2/20136

7. Context :The Club was originally a dining club. Initially, it was proposed that the club
would meet one evening per week at seven, at the Turk's Head Inn in Gerrard
Street, Soho. Later, meetings were reduced to once per fortnight whilst Parliament was
in session, and were held at rooms in St James's Street. Though the initial suggestion
was Reynolds', it is Dr Johnson whose name is most closely associated with the Club. John
Timbs, in his Club Life in London, gave an account of the Club's centennial dinner in
1864(photograph of which is given in the earlier slide).It was celebrated at the Clarendon
hotel.
Henry Hart Milman, the English historian, was the treasurer.
The Club or The Literary Club
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8. Members: Originally the Club had nine members. They were all celebrated
personalities of London society. They were--Sir Joshua Reynolds: artist; Dr.Samuel
Johnson: essayist, lexicographer & critic ; Edmund Burke: writer, later M.P.; Dr.
Christopher Nugent; Topham Beauclerk; Bennet Langton; Oliver Goldsmith:
professor, Anthony Chamier & John Hawkins: author.
Membership was increased to 12 in 1768. A membership of 12 was deemed optimal
to retain a qualitative excellence.
Link: www.wikipedia.org 6/2/20138

9. The Club or The Literary Club
Dr. Johnson explained the qualification of membership of the Club in the
following words: ―It was intended that the Club should consist of such men, as
that if only Two of them chanced to meet, they should be able to entertain
each other without wanting the addition of more Company to pass the Evening
agreeably.‖
The Club is still existent and the membership had increased more than 100.
The Club denied membership to personalities like Sir Winston Churchill and
F.E.Smith for being ‗too political‘.
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10. The Club or The Literary Club
 SirJoshuaReynolds RA FRS FRSA(16 July 1723 –3
February 1792) was an influential eighteenth-
century English painter. He was
specialized in portrait painting. He promoted
the "Grand Style" in painting which depended
on idealization of the imperfect. He was one
of the founder-members of the Club. He was
the first president of the Royal Academy.
King George III appreciated his merits and
knighted him in 1769.It is said that he
borrowed the idea of the Club from France.
Link: www.wikipedia.org
6/2/201310

11. Dr. Samuel Johnson Dr.Samuel Johnson
18 September 1709(O.S. 7 September)--(13 December 1784)
Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting
contributions to English literature as a
poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer,
editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a
devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been
described as "arguably the most distinguished man
of letters in English History‖. He is also the
subject of "the most famous single work of
biographical art in the whole of literature":James
Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. His Dictionary
of English Language is still acclaimed.
(An excerpt from the web page)
Link: www.wikipedia.org
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12. 6/2/201312
 Dr. Samuel Johnson was the leading literary figure of the 18th century England. He
embodied elegance, honesty, common sense as well as good manners which were considered
as the typical virtues of the period. Even today he is acclaimed as an icon of the English
intelligence and mannerism.
 His name is always uttered with reverence. Dr.Johnson wrote a few sensible but uninspired poetry
namely ‗The Vanity of Human Wishes‘ (1749) and London. His only novel, Rasselas (1759), was equally
sensible and equally dull.His masterpiece was A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).His ‗Lives of the
English poets‘ was a unique blending of biography and scholarly literary criticism.Johnson's common sense
was shown in the clear definitions of words.
 Link.www.kids.eb.com

13. 6/2/201313
*Johnson‘s immortality is not only for what he wrote but also for
his forceful personality and his wonderful and witty
conversation.
*All these have been recorded by James Boswell in his The Life of
Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791), the greatest of English
biographies.
*Boswell had a keen eye for significant detail and a proper
reverence for his subject. Boswell noted all of Johnson's
peculiarities—his rolling walk, his twitching face, his horrible
table manners, his rudeness to stupid people—but he also saw
his subject's sturdy common sense and his honesty. (See also
Boswell, James; Johnson, Samuel.)

14.  Edmund Burke(12 January 1729–9July,1797) was
an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and
philosopher.He served for many years in the House of
Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party.
 He is mainly remembered for his support of the cause of
the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition
to the French Revolution.
 Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals in
the 19th century.
 Since the 20th century, he has generally been viewed as
the philosophical founder of modern conservatism as well
as a representative of classical liberalism.
Link: www.wikipedia.org
Edmund Burke(1729-1797)
www.wikipedia.org 6/2/201314

15.  Hestor Piozzi (27 January 1741 [NS] – 2 May
1821) was a diarist, author, historian and patron
of the arts.
 Her affairs with Dr. Johnson became a hot
debate .
 Her first published works were two poems on
Fanny Burney. Her Anecdotes of the late
Samuel Johnson (1786) and her letters (1788)
were published after her death.
 As an inheritor of prestigious Salusbury
family, she reflected her literary
distinctiveness in all her writings.
Hester Lynch Thrale by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Link.www.wikipedia.org
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16. The Club
6/2/201316
 According to the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, her ‗Retrospection: or a
review of the most striking and important
events, characters, situations, and their
consequences which the last eighteen
hundred years have presented to the view of
mankind‘ is a feminist history of the time.
Her diaries and Anecdotes of the late Samuel
Johnson (1786) and her letters (1788)
published after the death of Dr.Johnson
provided an insight of Dr. Johnson‘s
personality overlooked by Boswell.

17. David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an
English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer.
He influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice
throughout the 18th century.
He was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson.
At his death, he was given a lavish public funeral
at Westminster Abbey.
He was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner.
Link: www.wikipedia.org 6/2/201317

18.  James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (October
29, 1740 - May 19, 1795) was a lawyer, diarist, and author
born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Boswell is best known for his
massive biography of Samuel Johnson.
 Although Boswell was not the first biographer in the
English language, he is almost certainly the first modern
biographer. His Life of Samuel Johnson is itself a literary
masterwork
 [An excerpt from the web page of New World Encyclopedia]
 Link. www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/James_Boswell James Boswell,9th Laird of Auchinle
www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/James_Bosw
6/2/201318

19.  In the history of literature sometimes a
single book by an author has made him
unforgettable forever. Boswell‘s biography
of Dr.Johnson is one such case. It is still
debatable whether he did a great service
to Dr.Johnson by writing his biography or
Dr.Johnson offered a blessing of
immortality to Boswell by permitting him
to write his biography.
Link: www.wikipedia.org 6/2/201319

20.  Charles James Fox PC (24 January 1749 – 13
September 1806), styled The
Honourable from 1762, was a prominent
British Whig statesman whose parliamentary
career spanned thirty-eight years of the
late 18th and early 19th centuries and who
was particularly noted for being the arch-
rival of William Pitt the Younger.
The Right Honourable
Charles James Fox
Link: www.wikipedia.org 6/2/201320

21. Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737 – January 16, 1794) was an
English historian and Member of Parliament. Gibbon is often
referred to as the first "modern" historian.
His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire was published in six volumes between 1776
and 1788.
The History is known principally for the quality and irony of its
prose, its use of primary sources, and its open criticism of
organized religion. It covered the period of the Roman
Empire after Marcus Aurelius, from just before 180 to 1453
and beyond, concluding in 1590, and attempted to explain why
the Roman Empire fell.
[ An excerpt from New World Encyclopedia]
www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edward_Gibbon6/2/201321

22. Sir William Scott served as judge of the High Court for thirty
years.
This long legal service provided the basis of his reputation as
the greatest of civilian (as opposed to common) lawyers.
His term of office coincided with the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic wars.
Scott had developed many aspects of the international law of
war, especially the law of neutral and belligerent rights at sea.
He also influenced the development of admiralty law.
He was an influential member of the Literary Club of Dr.Johnson.
Judge of the High Court of
Admiralty, 1798-1828
www.
books.google.es/books/about/Sir_William_Scott
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23.  Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1730 –
4 April 1774) was an Anglo-
Irish novelist, playwright and poet.
 He is best known for his novelThe Vicar
of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral
poem The Deserted Village (1770), and
his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768)
and She Stoops to Conquer (1771).
 She Stoops to Conquer was first
performed in 1773.
 He also wrote An History of the Earth
and Animated Nature.
 He is thought to have written
the classic children's tale The History of
Little Goody Two-Shoes, the source of
the phrase "goody two-shoes".
 He was an oiginal member of
Dr.Johnson’s Literary Club. 6/2/201323

24.  Topham Beauclerk (pronounced bo-CLAIR) (
22 December 1739 – 11 March 1780) was a
celebrated wit and a friend of Dr Johnson
and Horace Walpole, Lord Oxford. Topham
Beauclerk entertained Dr Johnson at his
home in Old Windsor for a number of weeks.
He appears several times in Boswell's Life of
Johnson. Topham Beauclerk:
6/2/201324 www.wikipedia.org

25. Dr. Johnson's Statue at the Market Square of Lichfield. Photo by Villafanuk.
(This photo has been released into the public domain by the author.)
Link.www//. http://www.ourenglish.org/pangbingjun.html
6/2/201325