The Art of Rhetoric is the earliest systematic work of rhetoric and literary criticism in the English. This work which brought into English the procedures of Ciceronian rhetoric-invention disposition style memory and delivery-the core of the academic curriculum in Renaissance England went through eight editions between 1553 and 1585. At the time its appeal was both practical and academic. Today it gives a unique insight into the formal training of such authors as Shakespeare Spenser Jonson and Milton.