All Program Dates

• February 5, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET

• February 19, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET

• March 5, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET

• March 19, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET

Registration

• Tuition for this course is $220. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.

• Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.

• This program is for those 18 and older.

• Registration opens for Delancey Society members on Friday, November 14, for Rosenbach members on Friday, November 21, and for the general public on Wednesday, November 26.

Description

Once, Samuel Johnson so dominated the culture of his day that we call his lifetime “The Age of Johnson.” He was an intellectual giant, a devastating wit, one of England’s greatest writers, and one of the world’s first literary celebrities. He shaped the English language in his Dictionary; he edited the plays of Shakespeare; and he told the life stories of dozens of great writers. And while his writings would be enough to make him a major figure, he benefited from his friendship with James Boswell, who seven years after his death, published The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Boswell’s Life is widely considered the greatest biography ever written and is for many people a desert-island book. Boswell transformed Johnson into one of the most vivid characters in world literature, a real-life counterpart to Falstaff and Mr. Pickwick, a lover of company who “laughed like a rhinoceros” but also suffered intensely from depression and anxiety.  

Over the course of four biweekly meetings we’ll read some of Johnson’s most important works—essays, poems, fiction, travel narratives, biography—and selections from Boswell’s Life. The focus will always be on the humanity of the man behind the works.  

Instructor

Jack Lynch is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University–Newark and the author or editor of more than 20 books, including editions of Johnson’s Dictionary, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson in Context, and just-for-fun, Samuel Johnson’s Insults: A Compendium of Snubs, Sneers, Slights, and Effronteries from the Eighteenth-Century Master.