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A Review of: “Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States, by Jean Ferguson Carr, Stephen L. Carr, and Lucille M. Schultz.”

Early in Archives of Instruction, Stephen Carr announces the authors’ goal, to ‘‘keep the past a plural and contested resource,’’ and their method, conducting ‘‘archival research that attends to the details of individual books and to the differences across texts’’ (20). Archives of Instruction thus not only contributes to the body of historical scholarship on rhetorical pedagogy but also challenges ‘‘several familiar ways of characterizing nineteenth-century textbooks’’ (206). One distinct innovation is the authors’ treatment of books that have been too often, until now, broadly grouped as nineteenth-century literacy texts. Complicating our consideration of these texts begins with the authors’ decision to divide the texts into the genres of rhetorics, readers, and compositions books. Rhetorics (Stephen Carr, Chapter one) ‘‘propose theoretical ways of mapping the instructional field and articulate systematic principles about language, style, invention, and discourse’’ (17). Readers (Jean Ferguson Carr, Chapter two) compile classical texts and ‘‘instruct students in the analysis of texts and provide a storehouse of cultural materials on which to practice the art of reading’’ (18). And composition textbooks (Lucille Schultz, Chapter three) ‘‘organize and invigorate activities of writing that early operated primarily to support instruction in reading and grammar’’ (18). The volume’s most valuable contribution, according to Stephen Carr, is the recognition of ‘‘the differences that structure the intricacies of the archive’’ (32–33). For instance, Carr suggests we consider textbooks not merely as derivative but rather as ‘‘compilations’’ (24). Alexander Jamieson’s A Grammar of Rhetoric and Polite Literature (1818) is representative, configuring Blair, Campbell, and others ‘‘into a systematic rhetoric’’ (43). Or to take another example, whereas Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric has been read by most contemporary scholars for his treatment of argument in Book 1, the most compiled selections of The Philosophy of Rhetoric in the nineteenth century were Campbell’s ‘‘methodological principles for deciding normative use’’ (i.e., national, present, reputable), suggesting nineteenthcentury rhetoricians used Campbell in ways we will not recognize if we do not pay attention to the way compilations make selections (39). Rhetoric Society Quarterly Vol. 38, No. 4, October 2008, pp. 462–466