In honor of Oscar Wilde’s birthday, we gather to honor his dazzling legacy by uncovering how he navigated a complex world where his wit and genius were both celebrated and fiercely condemned.

Let’s bring back the Medieval trend of wearing books as fashion accessories! In this hands-on bookbinding class, you will craft a belt book inspired by the Rosenbach’s 1364 illuminated almanac, which is also known as a “bat book.”

Step into the dark corridors of the unknown this season with the Ladies of the House of Love Book Club, Haunted Houses.

We will launch our Sense and Sensibility-fest by reading some of Austen’s early sketches, whose complexity, penetration, and energy will provide us with a suggestive backdrop for the novel.

Spend a day in Princeton with members of the Delancey Society and the Rosenbach’s Board as we enjoy exclusive tours of Morven Museum & Garden and the newly reimagined Princeton University Art Museum.

This season of the Republic of Letters Book Club explores the causes, consequences, and cultural legacy of the Whiskey Rebellion, one of the first major tests of federal authority in the early United States. Sessions meet variously at Carpenters’ Hall and the Rosenbach.

In Christopher Marlowe’s writing, all certainties are questioned, faith can be treated scurrilously, and the Devil is always just a contract away. Join Ed Simon as he explores the writing and the world of Renaissance England’s most scandalous of writers.

Herman Melville is now revered as a major figure in American literature. However, his reputation has not always been so secure. In this program, we'll chart a course through printed books, handwritten letters, and archival documents to consider how Melville's work has been rediscovered and re-evaluated by new generations of readers.

In this two-hour, immersive, hands-on workshop, distinguished local Irish American calligrapher and manuscript illuminator Susan Kelly vonMedicus will introduce you to Irish manuscript heritage and teach the Uncial script found in the Book of Kells and other early Irish manuscripts. By the end of the two-hour course, you will possess a foundational ability in using the Uncial alphabet, and you will have gained experience assembling words and sentences using the script.

Join Andalusia, the Rosenbach, and the Alliance Française de Philadelphie for a special opportunity to spend an afternoon in the library of one of early America’s most important intellects, engaging with his collection of 18th-century books and other library treasures.

This tour examines artifacts of the Gratz family of Philadelphia and asks how they learned the ways of this new world and made it their home. We’ll discuss how faith and revolution contributed to their story and how that story affected the lives of their relatives and our museum’s founders, the Rosenbach brothers.

Step into the dark corridors of the unknown this season with the Ladies of the House of Love Book Club, Haunted Houses.

Join Andalusia, the Rosenbach, and the Alliance Française de Philadelphie for a special opportunity to spend an afternoon in the library of one of early America’s most important intellects, engaging with his collection of 18th-century books and other library treasures.

Immigration has been a central theme of the history of the United States, especially in the 19^th century, when many current U.S. citizens’ ancestors became American residents and citizens. In this special, collaborative tour, learn about Morris Rosenbach, the father of Philip and Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, who left Bavaria to start a new life in Philadelphia.

Delancey Society members are cordially invited to enjoy cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and holiday cheer at the gracious home of Board Member Lenni Steiner and Perry Lerner. Join us for a festive gathering that celebrates both the season and the Rosenbach. 

Celebrate the winter season with a visit to the Rosenbach! Take a free, self-guided tour; visit our permanent exhibition, Treasures from the Rosenbach’s Collection, to view books from our Charles Dickens holdings; and enjoy a comfortable candle-lit reading nook. 

Looking for a one-of-a-kind way to celebrate the season? Join us at the Rosenbach Book Arts Center to print greeting cards designed with our unique collection of beautiful metal type and ornaments. 

This season of the Republic of Letters Book Club explores the causes, consequences, and cultural legacy of the Whiskey Rebellion, one of the first major tests of federal authority in the early United States. Sessions meet variously at Carpenters’ Hall and the Rosenbach.

We’ll explore the world of Edgar Allan Poe and discover the appeal of his fantastical works, from his intricately composed poems to the gothic splendor and mystery of his tales.

This course has two aims: to investigate the enabling power of fantasy to combat the horror of helplessness and smallness and to interrogate how fairy tales work to define gender roles for different cultures in different places and times.

When The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in 1890, in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, early reviewers denounced it as unclean and poisonous, and in 1895, passages of it were read back to Wilde in a courtroom. More than a century later, this tale of a beautiful young man, a besotted artist, a haunted portrait, and a dangerously persuasive friend still unsettles readers and yet remains a compelling read. 

Do you love discovering fascinating stories from history? Have you ever wanted to get up close and personal with museum and library collections, including rare books and manuscripts, as well as fine and decorative arts? If so, then this course is for you.   

Looking for a one-of-a-kind way to celebrate Valentine’s Day? Join us at the Rosenbach Book Arts Center to print Valentine cards designed with a unique collection of hand-set metal type and decorative ornaments. 

You know the songs. You’ve seen the film. But have you read  Victor Hugo’s 19^th-century blockbuster, Les Misérables? In reading Les Misérables, we will taste the democratic ideals Hugo championed in his work and life and see why the questions he raised still feel urgent today.   

They say that Ulysses can’t be read; it can only be reread. But whether you’re a beginner or a repeat offender, the important thing is to read the book deeply, thoughtfully, slowly, and joyfully, and this will be our goal and our practice in this online seminar.

Among the many treasures by Robert Burns at the Rosenbach is the manuscript of a song, “Their Groves of Sweet Myrtle.” While it is not among Burns’s best-known works, its significance will be unpacked in this course, co-taught by Dr. Steve Newman and Megan E.B. Poff of Temple University.

Participants in this course will have the opportunity to bind their own one-of-a-kind copy of “Carmilla” in the Rosenbach Book Arts Center using a German Single-section Binding. 

Dr. Melissa R. Klapper leads a seminar on her new book, Jewish Women at Home in the World: Gender, Judaism, and American Identity in the Rise of Mass Tourism  (NYU Press, 2026), a vivid look at the experiences of American Jewish women who traveled abroad during the rise of mass tourism in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

In this course, we will explore in detail The Waste Land’s poetic techniques, intricate allusions, cultural and biographical contexts, as well as textual history, answering what questions we can and generating still more.   

Come join us as we dive into five of Sheridan Le Fanu’s spooky tales, ending with his iconic vampire novella “Carmilla.” In this course, we will read Le Fanu’s story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872), wherein characters are haunted by ghosts, necromancers, vampires, and even an evil monkey.

In this four-week online class, we will read selections of Whitman’s experimental antebellum poems from his 1855, 1856, and 1860 editions of Leaves of Grass, followed by the mature poetry of the 1892 Leaves of Grass, which includes his Civil War-era “Drum Taps” poems and the short, lyrical poems that he wrote toward the end of his life while living in Camden, New Jersey and spending time with friends and colleagues in Philadelphia.   

This seminar will explore these Pennsylvania laws and the process of ending human bondage in the state. The laws led to Pennsylvania having the largest Black population in the North on the eve of the Civil War. At the same time, we’ll try to understand the limits of these laws and their unfairness to those people born into slavery before March 1, 1780. 

This two-session course in the Rosenbach Book Arts Center will cover several creative approaches to letterpress printmaking to produce colorful, exuberant broadsides interpreting the poetry of Walt Whitman.

Join Dr. Claire O’Callaghan, Editor-in-Chief of Brontë Studies, the official journal of the Brontë Society, for a five-week, in-depth exploration of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), one of the most influential novels in English literature, and its rich cultural legacy.

In 1942, just as the United States was entering World War II, William Faulkner published an episodic novel, Go Down Moses. At the heart of the novel is “The Bear,” a story about the life of Ike McCaslin and his initiation into the wonder of the wilderness that, in his lifetime, is fast disappearing. The novel takes its place in line with one of the first ecological novels in American history, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (1823), which also deals with slavery, landownership, and the threat to the wilderness.

Find inspiration in the Rosenbach’s collection and get to work on that writing project you’ve been dreaming about for years! 

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of Victorian literature’s most significant—and complicated—novels. The aim of this course is to approach the novel with full awareness of its multiplying contexts—the Victorian world Hardy was responding to, as well as its receptions (and various handlings/mishandlings) since. 

On the publication of Waverley, Jane Austen wrote “Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones.” Austen’s admiration for Scott was reciprocated. We will discuss the ways in which these iconic writers set the pattern for the development of the novel and explore how they dealt with the concerns of their times in their own ground-breaking ways.

Find inspiration in the Rosenbach’s collection and get to work on that writing project you’ve been dreaming about for years!