Inventing Public Speaking: Rhetoric and the Speech Book, 1730–1930

Formerly a synonym for oratory and elocution, “public speaking” after 1900 signaled, instead, a paradigm shift whereby extemporaneous-conversational speechmaking replaced declamation and oratorical composition. This study of more than 200 key titles published between 1730 and 1930 demonstrates that the modern public-speaking book emerged, not as an innovation in whole cloth, but rather from a generation-long process of selectively recombining materials extracted from preceding text genres. As a practical revolution, the new public speaking contributed to democratic, argument-rich public affairs and, as an intellectual movement, furthered the emergence of speech as a separate academic discipline.