1871 printing of 1860 copyrighted text. The author has Master of Arts and is credited as the author of other books. Boyd explains that his composition textbook is a culling together of numerous preceding texts on the topic, specifically, recent English treatises by Williams, Smart, Neil, and Harrison, and the standard works of Blair, Campbell, and Jamieson. He has also consulted the grammars of Clark, Murray, Fowler, Bullions, Goold Brown, Spencer, Greene, Butler, Tower, Bailey, Covell, and Mulligan. He also credits Welche's Analysis of the English Sentence, Tower's Grammar of Composition, Quakenbos's First Lessons And Advanced Course, and Parker's Aids. He claims that his wealth of experience as a teacher on the subject has given him a deeper understanding of what is necessary in a composition textbook. This book works its way through the most minute aspects of composition (capitalization, parts of speech, punctuation, etc.) through to larger concerns (style, hyperbole, subject matter, etc.). For each section, there are detailed lessons and examples. The Schultz Archive includes the entire text; however, there are numerous pages that are repeated or missing. Also, highlighter obscures the readability of some text.