Course | Johnson and Boswell in Scotland with Jack Lynch and Celia Barnes | Virtual
Tickets: $300
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October 13, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
October 27, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
November 10, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
November 24, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
December 8, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
Tuition for this course is $300. 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 [email protected].
To promote access to onsite and virtual Rosenbach experiences, we offer scholarships for each Signature Program. To inquire, email Sunstein Senior Manager of Digital Initiatives Edward G. Pettit at [email protected].
This program is for those 18 and older.
Registration opens for Delancey Society members on Thursday, August 27, for Rosenbach members on Thursday, September 3, and for the general public on Thursday, September 10.
Few literary friendships are as consequential as the one between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. In 1773, the 63-year-old Johnson, England's most celebrated man of letters, and the 32-year-old Boswell, his devoted Scottish friend and future biographer, set out on a tour of Scotland and the Hebrides. The journey produced two remarkable travel narratives: Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). Read together, these works offer far more than a record of 18th-century travel. They capture a friendship in action, preserve a Highland culture undergoing profound change, and reveal two very different ways of seeing the world. In this five-session course, Jack Lynch and Celia Barnes will guide participants through close readings and lively discussion of these fascinating intertwined texts.
Participants are encouraged to acquire Barnes and Lynch’s Oxford World's Classics edition of the two works, as the course will refer frequently to specific passages, and discussions will be easiest if everyone is using the same text.
Johnson and Boswell syllabus
Jack Lynch is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University–Newark, and Celia Barnes is Associate Professor of English at Lawrence University. Together they have edited two student editions of 18th-century texts: Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, published by Broadview Press earlier this year, and a 2018 Oxford World's Classics edition of the texts we’ll consider in this class, Samuel Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
All Program Dates
Registration
Description
Instructors
October 27, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
November 10, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
November 24, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
December 8, 2026 | 7:30pm - 9:00pm ET
Tuition for this course is $300. 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 [email protected].
To promote access to onsite and virtual Rosenbach experiences, we offer scholarships for each Signature Program. To inquire, email Sunstein Senior Manager of Digital Initiatives Edward G. Pettit at [email protected].
This program is for those 18 and older.
Registration opens for Delancey Society members on Thursday, August 27, for Rosenbach members on Thursday, September 3, and for the general public on Thursday, September 10.
Few literary friendships are as consequential as the one between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. In 1773, the 63-year-old Johnson, England's most celebrated man of letters, and the 32-year-old Boswell, his devoted Scottish friend and future biographer, set out on a tour of Scotland and the Hebrides. The journey produced two remarkable travel narratives: Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). Read together, these works offer far more than a record of 18th-century travel. They capture a friendship in action, preserve a Highland culture undergoing profound change, and reveal two very different ways of seeing the world. In this five-session course, Jack Lynch and Celia Barnes will guide participants through close readings and lively discussion of these fascinating intertwined texts.
Participants are encouraged to acquire Barnes and Lynch’s Oxford World's Classics edition of the two works, as the course will refer frequently to specific passages, and discussions will be easiest if everyone is using the same text.
Johnson and Boswell syllabus
Jack Lynch is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University–Newark, and Celia Barnes is Associate Professor of English at Lawrence University. Together they have edited two student editions of 18th-century texts: Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, published by Broadview Press earlier this year, and a 2018 Oxford World's Classics edition of the texts we’ll consider in this class, Samuel Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
All Program Dates
Registration
Description
Instructors
