Until recent years oratory was considered a fundamental component of the literature of a nation, and a liberal education implied a knowledge of the great speakers and their principal speeches no less than of the important poems, plays and prose works. For some time, however, the study of literature has been reduced in many places to just two genres: poetry and prose fiction; but of late literary studies have expanded considerably, to include speeches, children's and juvenile literature, historiography, diaries and journals, memoirs, letters, science and fantasy fiction - even graffiti and inscriptions.Increasingly, papers on Commonwealth speakers are heard at national and international conferences and found in scholarly journals, and the speeches of famous persons are studied with the same intensity as their imaginative works. As a result, rhetorical theories and communication studies have developed rapidly in order to better evaluate speeches, or public address. The papers included in this collection suggest the range of studies of Commonwealth public address: historical, comparative, analytical and survey. They examine the effectiveness of some of the major figures in world affairs: G K Goldhale and B G Tilak (India); Jessie Street and R G Menzies (Australia); Maurice Bishop (Grenada) and Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham (Guyana). In addition, they consider African and Canadian oratory and the relationship of speeches to history and politics, concluding with a proposed canon of Commonwealth public address.