Peter Mack studied at Oxford, the Warburg Institute, University of London, and Rome. He has been editor of the leading international journal Rhetorica and Chair of the English Department and the Arts Faculty at the University of Warwick. From October 2010 he will become Director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition. His books include, Renaissance Argument (1993), Elizabethan Rhetoric (2002) and Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare (2010).

• 1. Introduction and Origins ; 2. Diffusion and Reception of Classical Rhetoric ; 3. Italy 1390-1480 ; 4. Agricola ; 5. Erasmus ; 6. Northern Europe 1519-1545: The Age of Melanchthon ; 7. Northern Europe 1545-1580: Ramus and company ; 8. Southern Europe in the Sixteenth Century ; 9. New Syntheses 1600-1620: Keckermann, Vossius and Caussin ; 10. Manuals of Tropes and Figures ; 11. Letter-writing manuals ; 12. Preaching manuals and Legal dialectics ; 13. Vernacular Rhetorics ; 14. . Conclusion: Renaissance Rhetoric ; Bibliography of Secondary Works ; Glossary of Rhetorical and Dialectical Terms

In A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 13801620 Mack makes those important Latin Renaissance rhetoric manuals visible, in the process bringing to our attention some important works in the history of rhetoric ... Peter Mack has done more than anyone to make this important literature available and accessible for our age.