Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular

Bain, George Washington, 1840-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7

Word count: 370K words
Chapters: 37

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight PopularAuthor: Bain, George Washington, 1840-,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 12, 2005

Editor's review

This is a popular anthology compiled by the nineteenth-century American author George Washington Bain, and its title states its organizing principle: wit, humor, reason, rhetoric, prose, poetry, and story woven into eight popular lecture topics. Its value lies in showing the kinds of material favored in public speaking and home reading of the time—epigrams, anecdotes, argumentative passages, and verse placed side by side—and it can be read either as a stylistic miscellany or as a slice of nineteenth-century American popular taste and rhetorical education. Its highlight is that the material is arranged with a clear awareness of oral transmission; paragraphs are mostly short and turns are obvious, making it suitable for studying how to hold an audience on the platform. It need not be read closely piece by piece; browse by genre grouping and note how the editor uses story to support argument and humor to soften exposition. It is better suited as a sample collection for history and rhetoric than as a contemporary humor anthology.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying nineteenth-century American popular literature and speech culture
English learners who need speech material and rhetorical examples
Readers interested in early American humor and anecdotal styles
Readers who like to skip-read by genre and read in fragments

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting contemporary humor or coherent narrative
Beginners who need modern annotations and background introductions
Readers impatient with nineteenth-century English expression and allusions

Reading tips

Read by category—wit, humor, rhetoric, and so on—week by week, comparing the selection and tone of different genres.
Choose short passages to read aloud, mark the turns and punchlines, and feel the rhythmic design of oral expression.
Treat anecdote and story pieces as material cards and record transferable argument structures.
When encountering unfamiliar allusions, skip them first and look them up after finishing the piece, so as not to interrupt the reading rhythm.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What do the eight lecture topics in the title mean?

They refer to the eight sections the editor organized around themes such as wit, humor, reason, rhetoric, prose, poetry, and story; the selections in each section revolve around public speaking and popular reading, and the specific pieces follow the arrangement in the main text.

Is this book suitable for learning English?

It can be used as extensive reading material for nineteenth-century English, but the language and allusions bear obvious marks of the era and it is not suitable as a modern English textbook. It is best used with the goals of stylistic appreciation and material collection, together with dictionaries and background materials.

What is the e-book reading experience like?

This version is released by Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain English e-book; the text is complete but has no modern annotations. It is suitable for skip-reading and searching on electronic devices; for close reading, it is advisable to organize your own notes on the pieces.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Bain, George Washington, 1840- Author · 1840

George Washington Bain (born 1840) is an author about whom very little biographical information survives; publicly available sources are limited, and his nationality, occupation, and educational background are not clearly recorded. Only one of his works is held in this collection, namely Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular. As the title suggests, the book gathers witty sayings, humorous anecdotes, argumentative reasoning, and rhetorical examples, while also including prose, poetry, and stories, woven together under eight popular themes. It is clearly a compilation and reader, intended either for reading aloud and enjoyment or for imitation by those learning to write. Bain thus appears to have been concerned with the popular dissemination of English oral expression and written rhetoric, and his editorial approach emphasizes both practical use and entertainment. Owing to the lack of biographical material, this introduction can only outline the subject matter and style of the work itself, without speculating about his life.