A Course of Lectures on Elocution: Together with Two Dissertations on Language; and Some Other Tracts relative to those Subjects. A New Edition.

London: Printed for J. Dodsley..., 1787. 8vo, 213 x 126 mms., pp. xxiii [xxiv blank], 320, bound in quarter 19th century green straight-grain sheepskin, pebbled green boards, Inscribed in pencil on verso of front free end-paper: "To/ J. C. Newlands, Esq/ From R. C. Bell/ A small tribute from/ a grateful student," followed by the date of the gift, "25 / 2 / 09", i.e., February 25, 1909. ell is possibly the Irish journalist and author, Robert Bell ( 1800 - 1867), who was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and worked in Dublin until he moved to London in 1828. Sheridan's Course of Lectures on Elocution was first published in 1762, and was reviewed at great length in two consecutive issues of The Monthly Review. Sheridan began giving his lectures on elocution in 1758, first in Oxford and Cambridge, then in London, and later in Edinburgh, where, according to James Boswell, David Hume described them as "vastly too enthusiastic. He is to do every thing by Oratory." Despite Hume's displeasure, Sheridan's lectures were enormously popular, and his book went through several editions. In his monograph on Sheridan's book, The Dublin Orator: Thomas Sheridan's Influence on Eighteenth-Century Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1972), W. Benzie concluded that "The book rapidly established itself as a leading work on elocution, and made him leader of the Natural School of elocution. The Elocution Movement became an extremely powerful one, and continued to exert an important influence on theories of public address during the 19th and 20th centuries" (p. 53). The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the rise of a teacher of elocution named James Cook Newlands (1870-1956), also known as J. C. Newlands. According to several published notices of his lectures and teaching, he was Fulton Lecturer at New College, Edinburgh, as well as Carnegie Trust Lecturer on Voice Production at Dunfermline, and, not least, Lecturer on Vocal Physiology at Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh (The Cambridge Review, February 24, 1910, p. 308). In the year 1909, the date of the presentation inscription in this copy, Newlands oversaw the publication of the second edition of his own book, Voice Production and the Phonetics of Declamation, published in London by Hodder and Stoughton. The first edition had come out in 1906. Two years after the inscription here, Newlands brought out his longer Studies for Recitation and in Elocution (1911), published in London by Oliver and Boyd. The theatre historian Paul Cornwell calls Newlands a "renowned expert on public speaking" in his 2004 study of the life of Terence Gray. Newlands had tutored Gray, and later, for a time, was the business manager of Gray's theatre company. Nobody had a more varied career than Terence Gray (1895-1986), who was well-known as an Egyptologist before becoming a brilliant and controversial playwright and theatre manager, then becoming an internationally famous Taoist poet, at which time he adopted the pseudonym Wei Wu Wei. Despite the renown that Newlands had during his lifetime, I have found very little about him today apart from the several fascinating references in Cornwell's biography of Gray (Only by Failure: The Many Faces of the Impossible Life of Terence Gray [London, 2004]). That general lack of information makes this presentation copy of Sheridan's book, given to Newlands by a "grateful student", all the more interesting and telling. The student is probably the Scottish lawyer and philanthropist Robert Craigie Bell (1840-1911), known as R. C. Bell, who was a Writer to the Signet; in other words, he was one of the leading advocates in Scotland at the time (A History of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet: With a List of the Members of the Society from 1594 to 1890 [Edinburgh, 1890], p. 17). It is not difficult to imagine why a lawyer might wish to become an effective public speaker. Both Newlands and Bell lived in Edinburgh, but Newlands lectured widely abroad, including taking a "world recital tour lecturing on Public Speaking" in the late 1920s, just before becoming business manager for Gray's theatre troupe (Cornwell, p. 98).

SHERIDAN (Thomas): - A Course of Lectures on Elocution: Together with Two Dissertations on Language; and Some Other Tracts relative to those Subjects. A New Edition.