Publication of James Sheridan Knowles’s ‘The Elocutionist’, December 1821.

On Monday December the 10th, 1821, the Glasgow Herald had an advertisement for the publication, that day, of James Sheridan Knowles’s The Elocutionist. It was printed by James Hedderwick for Reid and Henderson, booksellers in Glasgow, among others. An edition of this title, dated 1822, is in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

The full title in the Library’s catalogue is:

“The elocutionist: a collection of pieces in prose and verse, peculiarly adapted to display the art of reading, in the most comprehensive sense of the term; including among other original matter, a debate, composed expressly for the purpose of exercising the young student in purely argumentative declamation, and preceded by an introduction, in which an attempt is made to simplify Mr. Walker’s system, and, by referring his illustration to more general principles, to reduce the number of his rules.”