author
J. H. (John Hays) Gardiner
1863–1913
A Harvard professor and influential teacher of English, he wrote practical books on composition, rhetoric, and literary study that helped shape classroom reading and writing in the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
The Making of Arguments
by J. H. (John Hays) Gardiner
About the author
John Hays Gardiner was an American scholar, teacher, and author best known for books on English composition and rhetoric. Born in 1863 and dying in 1913, he taught at Harvard and wrote or co-wrote works including The Mother Tongue, Elements of English Composition, Manual of Composition and Rhetoric, The Forms of Prose Literature, The Bible as English Literature, and The Making of Arguments.
His writing has a clear classroom focus: instead of treating literature and argument as abstract subjects, he aimed to make them usable for students. That practical approach helped his books remain visible long after his lifetime, especially in libraries and digital archives of classic educational texts.
Gardiner's career was cut short by his death in 1913, but he is still remembered as part of an important period in the teaching of English in the United States, when composition, rhetoric, and literary study were being shaped into modern school and college subjects.