1855 printing of the 1854 copyrighted text. The author is credited with a Master of Arts degree and as Associate Principal of the Collegiate School in New York, and as the author of First Lessons in Composition. Based on the same plan as the author's book for younger students, First Lessons in Composition, this text is meant for students in colleges and higher academies. The preface boasts its merits are its clearness and simplicity, its variety of subjects and their connections, and the practicality of its exercises. The sections cover the history of the English language; punctuation; rhetoric--with sections on taste, the imagination, the sublime, the beautiful, wit, humor, figurative language, varieties of style, and criticism; prose composition--with sections on invention, amplification, metaphorical language, climax and anithesis, paraphrasing, description, narration, letters, fiction, orations, etc; and poetical composition. Collection of rules and exercises, beginning with history of English language and punctuation until building up to poetry. It credits the influence of Blair, Burke, and Alison. Illustrative textual examples are used throughout. The Schultz Archive's copy is roughly the complete text.
1887 printing of the enlarged edition of the first part of Bain's English Composition and Rhetoric. Alexander Bain is a Doctor of Laws of English and Emeritus Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen.The first part, Intellectual Elements of Style (included here), is focused on "Elements of Style that concern the understanding." The second part is about the "emotional qualities." This "re-modeling" is designed to narrow the scope and devote more attention to certain portions chosen for their utility. Its topics are order of words; number of words; the sentence; the paragraph; figures of speech; and the qualities of style: clearness, simplicity, impressiveness, and picturesqueness. Bain states that these topics are expounded, exemplified, and applied to the arts of criticism and composition. Bain has somewhat reordered the contents that was previously sectioned under the kinds of composition (description, narration, exposition, oratory). The Schultz Archive copy is the complete text of part first of the enlarged edition.