1890 printing. The text is divided into Junior and Senior sections. The Junior section is further broken down into synthesis of simple sentences, practice in simple sentences, sentences, combined, punctuation, easy narrative, easy essays, letters, and grammar. The Senior section is broken down into on the choice of words, on the arrangement of words, grammar, the sentence, simile and metaphor, brevity, strength, miscellaneous sentences to be amended, miscellaneous subjects for composition, and notes for teachers. The book contains some 131 numbered exercises and 381 numbered rules or explanations of rules. The notes for teachers explains that composition naturally divides into three parts: elementary practice, instruction in correcting writing, and instruction in beautiful writing. The Schultz Archive copy is roughly the complete text.
1890 printing of the 1888 copyrighted text. The author is credited as Teacher of English in the Hillhouse High School, New Haven, Connecticut. This text asks how teachers should make use of the now cheaply available copies of quality literature in their classrooms. The chapters cover: History of the English Language, the Anglo-Saxon Element, the Classical Element, Figures of Speech, Common Errors, Diction, Sentences, Punctuation and Capitals, Letter-Writing, Composition, and Biographical Sketches. Exercises and illustrative examples are used in the available chapters. The book credits the influence of Guest's Lectures on the History of England; Angus' The Handbook of the English Tongue; Swinton's New Word-Analysis; the rhetorics of D. J. Hill, A. S. Hill, Hart, and DeMille; Errors in the Use of English by Hodgson; Mistakes in Writing English by Bigelow; Wilson's Treatise on Punctuation; and Whitney's Language and the Study of Language. The Schultz Archive's copy only includes later chapters on letter-writing and composition of various modes.
1890 printing of the 1886 copyrighted text. The author is credited as Professor of Rhetoric in Amherst College. The book's preface emphasizes the practical, being those elements that may be applied to the construction of literature and can be taught. It must be taught as mechanism and through its effects in the concrete. The introduction further explains that rhetoric is adaptation, a science and an art, and that the text will deal with it in two main topics: style, which deals with the expression of discourse, and invention, which deals with the thought. The style section of the book has chapters on diction, figures of speech, and composition. The invention section has chapters on mental aptitudes and habits, general processes in the ordering of material, reproduction of the thought of others, invention deal with observed objects (description), invention dealing with events (narration), invention dealing with generalizations (exposition), invention dealing with truths (argumentation), and invention dealing with practical issues (persuasion). The introduction credits the influence of Campbell. The rules are accompanied with illustrative examples from notable writers. The Schultz Archive's copy is roughly the complete text. A few pages cut off the edges of the text.
