A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike because all other partes of Rhetorike are grounded thereupon, euery parte sette forthe in an Oracion vpon questions, verie profitable to bee knowen and redde   By: Richard Rainolde (-1606)

About this book: A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike was published in 1563. Only five copies of the original are known to exist. This e book was transcribed from microfiche scans of the original in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. The scans can be viewed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France website at http://gallica.bnf.fr.

Typography: The original line and paragraph breaks, hyphenation, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, inconsistent use of an acute accent over "ee", the use of u for v and vice versa, and the use of i for j and vice versa, have been preserved. All apparent printer errors have also been preserved, and are listed at the end of this document.

The following alterations have been made:

1. Long s has been regularized as s.

2. The paragraph symbol, resembling a C in the original, is rendered as ¶.

3. Missing punctuation, hyphens, and paragraph symbols have been added in brackets, e.g. [ ].

4. A decorative capital followed by a capital letter is represented here as two capital letters, e.g. NAture.

5. Except for the dedication, which is in modern italics, the majority of the original book is in blackletter font, with some words in a modern non italic font. All modern font passages are marked by underscores.

6. Sidenotes have been placed in line, approximately where they appear in the original.

7. Incorrect page numbers have been corrected, but are included in the list of printer errors at the end of this e book.

8. Abbreviations and contractions represented as special characters in the original have been expanded as noted in the table below. A "macron" means a horizontal line over a letter. "Supralinear" means directly over a letter; "sublinear" means directly under a letter. The "y" referred to below is an Early Modern English form of the Anglo Saxon thorn character, representing "th," but identical in appearance to the letter "y."

Original Expansion

vowel with macron vowel[m] or vowel[n] y with supralinear e y^e (i.e., the) accented q with semicolon q[ue] w with supralinear curve w[ith] e with sublinear hook [ae]

Pagination: This book was paginated using folio numbers in a recto verso scheme. The front of each folio is the recto page (the right hand page); the back of each folio is the verso page (the left hand page in a book). In the original, folio numbers (beginning after the table of contents) are printed only on the recto side of each leaf. For the reader's convenience, all folio pages in this e book, including the verso pages, have been numbered in brackets according to the original format, with the addition of "r" for recto and "v" for verso, e.g., [Fol. x.r] is Folio 10 recto, [Fol. x.v] is Folio 10 verso.

Sources consulted: The uneven quality of the microfiche scans, as well as the blackletter font and some ink bleed through in the original, made the scans difficult to read in some places. To ensure accuracy, the transcriber has consulted the facsimile reprint edited by Francis R. Johnson (Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, New York, 1945). The facsimile reprint was prepared primarily from the Bodleian copy, with several pages reproduced from the copy in the Chapin Library at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, where the Bodleian copy was unclear.]

¶ A booke cal led the Foundacion of Rhetorike, be cause all other partes of Rhetorike are grounded thereupon, euery parte sette forthe in an Oracion vpon questions, verie profitable to bee knowen and redde: Made by Ri chard Rainolde Maister of Arte, of the Uniuersitie of Cambridge. 1563.

Mens. Marcij. vj.

¶ Imprinted at London, by Ihon Kingston.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORIE