This volume comprises papers presented at the Third Isle of Thorns Conference on Finite Geometries and Designs. The papers explore the structure and associated incidence structures of Galois geometries, and their related automorphism groups. Among the main topics covered are generalized quadrangles and n-gons, groups acting on geometries, linear spaces, partial geometries, diagram geometries, non-Desarguesian planes, strongly regular graphs, and designs. This timely collection of articles is expertly presented and will be of interest to research workers and postgraduates in combinatorics, design theory, and finite geometries.

Design theory has grown to be a subject of considerable interest in mathematics, not only in itself, but for its connections to other fields such as geometry, group theory, graph theory and coding theory. This textbook, first published in 1985, is intended to be an accessible introduction to the subject for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students which should prepare them for research in design theory and its applications. The first four chapters of the book are designed to be the core of any course in the subject, while the remaining chapters can be utilized in more advanced or longer courses. The authors assume some knowledge of linear algebra for the first half of the book, but for the second half, students need further background in algebra.

Originally published in 1981, this collection of 33 research papers follows from a conference on the interwoven themes of finite Desarguesian spaces, Steiner systems, coding theory, group theory, block designs, generalized quadrangles, and projective planes. There is a comprehensive introduction, which aims to interest the non-specialist in the subject and which indicates how the contributions fit together. This is a field of research pursued both for its intrinsic interest and its applications. These papers include a number of open problems whose statement requires very little mathematical sophistication.

This new edition of Hugh Blair's "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres," edited by Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran, answers the need for a complete, reliable text. The book seeks to generate a renewed interest in Blair by provoking new inquiries into the tradition of belletristic rhetoric and by serving as both aid and incentive to others who may join in the project of improving understanding of this landmark rhetorical scholarship.
This edition" "contains forty-seven lectures and remains faithful to the text of the 1785 London edition. The editors contextualize Hugh Blair's motivations and thinking by providing in their introduction an extended account of Blair's life and era. The bibliography of works by and about Blair is an invaluable aid, surpassing previous research on Blair.
Although the extent of its influence cannot be measured fully, Blair's "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres "was undoubtedly a primary vehicle for introducing many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars to classical rhetoric and French belletristic rhetoric--its success due in part to the ease with which the lectures combine neoclassical and Enlightenment thought, accommodating emerging social concerns. Ferreira-Buckley and Halloran's extensive treatment revives the tradition of belletristic rhetoric, improving the understanding of Blair's place in the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discourse, while finding him relevant in the twenty-first century.