The Rhetoric of Blair, Campbell, and Whately

by James L. Golden, Edward P.J. Corbett

Hugh Blair, George Campbell, and Richard Whately, whose works were first published in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, constituted the great triumvirate of British Rhetoricians. For 20 years, earlier printings of this book, which contains substantial excerpts comprising the most significant portions of their writings, have been widely used as textbooks in history-of-rhetoric courses. An increasing interest in rhetoric at the college level has created a renewed demand for reprints of such classic primary texts.
The Preface places the three rhetoricians within the context of the rhetorical tradition, which began in 5th-century BCE Greece. The bibliographies have been updated to include 20th-century scholarly work on Blair, Campbell, and Whately, and on the 18th- and 19th-century rhetorical movement. Biographical sketches of Blair, Campbell, and Whately are also provided.

416 pages, Paperback

First published April 23, 1990

Reviews

[Lance · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an edited volume that includes the most important parts of Blair, Campbell, and Whately. In the preface, Golden and Corbett mention that their purpose is to make these texts available during a time when actual volumes were becoming difficult to find, except in special collections. Now digital archives pretty much make this book unuseful, unless you are obsessed with physical books. All these works have several free editions that are searchable digitally.

That said, Golden and Corbett's introduction is definitely worth the read. They do a nice job giving a succinct history of rhetoric that will inform the reading of these works, while giving you a reasonably good foundation in the history of rhetoric (if you don't have one).