[Rarebooks] fa: HUGH BLAIR - LECTURES ON RHETORIC AND BELLES LETTRES - 2 Vols./First Ed. 1783

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th, 18th & 19th-Century English titles,  
auctions ending Sunday, September 25. More details and images can be  
found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Hugh Blair: Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. London: Printed  
for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and W. Creech, in Edinburgh, 1783. FIRST  
EDITION. Two volumes, tall 4to (29.5 cm), in early gilt-ruled calf;  
marbled endpapers; vii + 496; [4] + 550 + [18] pp.; engraved portrait  
frontispiece. ESTC T143711.

Rubbing and bumping to the boards, spines worn and chipped; hinges  
cracked but boards are holding; offsetting and tanning to the title- 
page from the frontispiece, light age-toning to the leaves; otherwise  
contents are very clean and fresh, free of foxing and firmly bound.  
Front paste-downs with the engraved armorial bookplates of Morton  
Jeffery.

An important figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, friend of Hume and  
Adam Smith, Hugh Blair (1718-1800) was a prominent church divine as  
well as Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the  
University of Edinburgh, the first chair of English Literature ever  
established. On retiring in 1783, he published his lectures for the  
first time, to prevent the dissemination of "Imperfect Copies of them"  
transcribed from "notes taken by Students who heard them read." The  
Lectures, considered the first great treatise on rhetoric and  
composition in English, were instantly popular, going through ten  
editions before 1806 in England alone, and remained influential for  
generations, particularly in the United States. In the course of the  
47 lectures, Blair covers such subjects as Style, the Sublime, the  
Rise and Progress of Language and Writing, the Structure of Sentences,  
Figurative Language, Metaphor, Hyperbole, Eloquence and Public  
Speaking, Pronunciation and Delivery, Historical Writing, Poetry,  
Tragedy, Comedy, etc., etc.