Catherine Hobbs, ed. Nineteenth‐Century Women Learn to Write. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1995.343 pages. $47.50 cloth. Richard Fulkerson, Teaching the Argument in Writing. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996, 184 pp. Thomas P. Miller. The Formation of College English. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997. ix‐x + 345 pages. $22.95 paper.

(Inter)views: Cross‐Disciplinary Perspectives on Rhetoric and Literacy edited by Gary A. Olson and Irene Gale, with an introduction by David Bleich.Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. 269 pp. Rhetorical Questions: Studies of Public Discourse by Edwin Black. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992; 209 pp. $24.95 cloth. An Introduction to Composition Studies,> edited by Erika Lindemann and Gary Tate. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. 189. Methods and Methodology in Composition Research ed. Gesa Kirsch and Patricia A. Sullivan. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois U P, 1992; ix+354. John Donne and the Rhetorics of Renaissance Discourse by James S. Baumlin.Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991; 333 pages. Richard McKeon: A Study by George Kimball Plochmann.Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990; vi + 260pp. The Selected Writings of John Witherspoon ed. By Thomas Miller. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990. 318.

Richard Leo Enos, ed. Oral and Written Communication: Historical Approaches. "Written Communication Annual, An International Survey of Research and Theory,” vol. 4. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1990. 264 pages. Susan C. Jarratt. Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. 181 pp., $22.50. Brandt, Deborah. Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers, and Texts. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. 151 pages. Jeanette Harris. Expressive Discourse. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1990. 206 pages.

Patricia P. Matsen, Philip Rollinson, Marion Sousa, eds. Readings from Classical Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. viii + 382 pages. Roderick P. Hart. Modern Rhetorical Criticism. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman/Little Brown, 1990. iv + 542 pages. Susan Miller. Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition. Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. 267 pages. Bruce Lincoln. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 238 pages. Gregory Clark. Dialogue, Dialectic, and Conversation: A Social Perspective on the Function of Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. xix + 93 pages. Lawrence J. Prelli. A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989. xi + 320 pages. Kathleen E. Welch. The Contemporary Reception of Classical Rhetoric: Appropriations of Ancient Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990. 186 pages.

(1990). Nineteenth‐century rhetoric at the universities of Aberdeen and St. Andrews with an annotated bibliography of Archiveal materials. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 287-299.

The freshman composition course is a peculiarly American institution not shared by modern British or European universities. This study grew out of an attempt to understand why rhetoric fell from favor in the British universities during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and why composition, as an course, failed to develop. It is the purpose of this study to examine writing instruction in the British universities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in order to understand such developments.2 Writing instruction within any society is subject to social and political influences, and nowhere is this more true than in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Britain, that territory that encompassed England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In addition, strong religious movements and a special linguistic situation during this period shaped where and how writing was taught. The eighteenth century in Britain was a period of transition as the agricultural population migrated to the cities in large numbers. Industrialization was rapid. Between 1700 and 1800, England saw the rise of the industrial centers of Manchester and Liverpool, while Scotland changed from a poor agricultural society to a relatively industrialized one with an increase in population from 84,000 to 500,000 during the nineteenth century. Preparatory schools and universities were not available or adequate. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, England had two universities, Oxford and Cambridge. Although Scotland had four well-established universities, Ireland had one, and Wales none. The eighteenth century was also a period of upward mobility, and good English became a rung on the ladder. With economic stability established, the large and powerful merchant class and those aspiring to better themselves saw education in general, and language in particular, as one of the ways to move up. In response, the school teachers and grammarians, with a strong belief in rationality and rules, set out to standardize the language, firm in the beliefs that change was a sign of deterioration and that Latin was the standard by which all languages should be measured. During the period there was also a rise in nationalism, which resulted in a new reverence for language and literature. Although men and

In the years since its publication in 1983, The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric has become a classic in its field, proving to be an invaluable resource for students of rhetoric and composition, as well as for scholars in English, speech, and philosophy. This revised and updated edition defines the field of rhetoric as no other volume has.