The Speaker: Or, Miscellaneous Pieces, selected from the Best English Writers, and disposed under proper heads, with a view to facilitate the Improvement of Youth in Reading and Speaking. To which is prefixed An Essay On Elocution.

London: Printed for Joseph Johnson,, 1774. Second edition of this best-selling anthology on elocution, with a preface outlining his personal rules for eloquence. In its notice, the Monthly Review recognises Enfield's collection as "a valuable miscellany". In the Speaker, William Enfield (1741-1797), a utilitarian minister and lecturer at Warrington's dissenting academy in Lancashire, collects extracts from classical and contemporary authors, including Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Cato, to serve as models for young readers. Joseph Johnson published two editions of Enfield's Speaker in 1774: the second edition retains largely the same number and arrangement of extracts as the first, adding only Sterne's Story of Le Fever at the start of Book VI. Octavo (200 x 122 mm). Contemporary tree calf, smooth spine with six compartments ruled and with floral decoration in gilt, red morocco label to second, covers panelled in gilt, marbled endpapers, edges sprinkled red. Engraved booklabel of William Leak (c.1796-1857) of the Poplars, Follifoot, on front pastedown. Very lightly bumped and worn, slight browning and foxing to endpapers and outer leaves: a very attractive copy. Alston VI 376. Monthly Review, or Literary Journal, vol. 52, 1775.