The Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London, gives free educational lectures to the general public. The college was founded for this purpose in 1596 / 1597, when it appointed seven professors; this has since increased to eight and in addition the college now has visiting professors.
The Professor of Rhetoric is always appointed by the Mercers’ School Memorial Trust, which is administered by the Worshipful Company of Mercers. The title is a broad one, and Professors of Rhetoric have included historians, poets, educators and literary critics.
(Years given as, for example, 1596 / 1597 refer to Old Style and New Style dates.)
| 1 | Caleb Willis | March 1596 / 1597 |
| 2 | Richard Ball | 1598 |
| 3 | Charles Croke | 14 January 1613 / 1614 |
| 4 | Henry Croke | 26 May 1619 |
| 5 | Edward Wilkinson | 13 April 1627 |
| 6 | John Goodridge | 6 November 1638 |
| 7 | Richard Hunt | 29 November 1654 |
| 8 | William Croune FRS | 8 June1659 |
| 9 | Henry Jenkes | 21 October 1670 |
| 10 | John King | 2 October 1676 |
| 11 | Charles Gresham | 20 August 1686 |
| 12 | Edward Martyn | 4 December 1696 |
| 13 | John Ward | 1 September 1720 |
| 14 | Joseph Whateley | 19 January 1759 |
| 15 | Joseph Thomas Waugh | 11 April 1797 |
| 16 | F Newnham | 7 January 1808 |
| 17 | Edward Owen | 13 November 1817 |
| 18 | Charlton Lane | 23 April 1863 |
| 19 | Thomas Francis Dallin | 9 July 1875 |
| 20 | J E Nixon | 4 February 1881 |
| 21 | Foster Watson | 22 January 1915 |
| 22 | Oliver Elton | 19 April 1929 |
| 23 | George Stuart Gordon | 2 May 1930 |
| 24 | Arthur William Reed | 8 December 1933 |
| 1939–1945 Lectures in abeyance | ||
| 25 | Rowland Walter Jepson | 6 June 1946 |
| 26 | Lord David Cecil | 27 June 1947 |
| 27 | Nevill Coghill | 14 October 1948 |
| 28 | William Empson | 1953 |
| 29 | Richard Hughes | 1954 |
| 30 | Bonamy Dobrée | 1957 |
| 31 | Stephen Spender | 1961 |
| 32 | John Wain | 1963 (Hilary term) |
| 33 | Cecil Day-Lewis | 1963–1964 |
| 34 | Patric Dickinson | 1965–1967 |
| 35 | Sir Robert Birley | 1968–1982 |
| 1983–1984 vacant | ||
| 36 | John Morley Pick | 1985 |
| 37 | Jan Kott | 1986 |
| 38 | John Morley Pick | 1987 |
| 39 | J M Rae | 1988 |
| 40 | Sir Andrew Derbyshire | 1990 |
| 41 | Peter G Moore | 1 September 1992 |
| 42 | Peter Hennessy | 1 September 1994 |
| 43 | Lynette Hunter | 1 September 1997 |
| 44 | Richard Sorabji CBE FBA | 1 September 2000 |
| 45 | Kathleen Burk | 1 September 2003 |
| 46 | Rodney Barker | 1 September 2006 |
| 47 | Richard J. Evans | 1 September 2009 |
Famous quotes containing the words professor and/or rhetoric:
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.”
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (20th century)