Died February 05, 2020
Irma S. Lustig was an American scholar of eighteenth-century British literature, with specialties in the work of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, as well as in the genres of biography and autobiography. She was a research associate in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania and also held faculty positions at Bryn Mawr College and Yale University. Her research was supported by a number of prestigious awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Warnock Postdoctoral Fellowship from Yale, and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the American Philosophical Society
A leading figure in modern Boswellian studies, Dr. Lustig served as a member of the editorial committee for the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell from 1979. For that series, she co-edited two volumes of Boswell's journal with Frederick A. Pottle: Boswell: The Applause of the Jury, 1782–1785 (1981) and Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785–1789 (1986). She also conceived of and edited the 1995 collection of scholarly essays, Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters. She was dedicated to teaching the subject, twice conducting NEH Summer Seminars for School Teachers at the University of Pennsylvania on Boswell's journal and the Life of Johnson.