ABSTRACT
Josiah Holbrook, the son of fairly prosperous parents of Derby, Connecticut, was born in 1788. He drowned in 1854 in Virginia while searching for specimens for his geological cabinets. The three-page article in the American Journal of Education presented a description of Holbrook’s view of his Society for Mutual Education, later to be called the American Lyceum or Society for the Improvement of Schools and Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The major contribution of Holbrook’s lyceum concept is to be found in its organizational and social characteristics. Holbrook’s idea of the lyceum was not unique in the lectures it sponsored, but it was distinctive as a social institution. Holbrook and Timothy Claxton were of the same generation, one British and one American. Claxton seemed first to have been attracted to the mechanics’ institutes and then to have turned to Holbrook’s lyceum. I.
