author
Brainerd Kellogg
1834–1920
Best remembered for helping popularize sentence diagramming, this 19th-century educator wrote practical English textbooks that shaped classroom grammar teaching for generations. He taught at Middlebury College and built a reputation as a clear, methodical guide to language and composition.
2 Audiobooks
Higher Lessons in English: A work on English grammar and composition
by Alonzo Reed, Brainerd Kellogg
About the author
Born in Champlain, New York, in 1834, Brainerd Kellogg was an American educator and author who became closely associated with the teaching of English grammar and rhetoric. He studied at Middlebury College, graduating in 1858, and later returned there as a tutor and then as Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature.
Kellogg is most often remembered for his schoolbooks on grammar and composition, especially his work with Alonzo Reed. Their books helped spread the sentence-diagramming method now known as the Reed–Kellogg system, which became a familiar part of English instruction in the United States.
He continued writing and teaching-focused publishing long after his years on the Middlebury faculty, and his name remains tied to a very visual, hands-on way of understanding sentence structure. He died in 1920, but his influence still lingers anywhere students are introduced to diagramming sentences.