Darold Leigh Henson
Born: 1942 in Lincoln, Illinois
Pen Name: D. Leigh Henson Connection to Illinois: Henson was born and raised in Lincoln and attended Lincoln College his freshman year before earning a bachelor's degree in English at Illinois State University in 1964. Biography: Born and raised in Lincoln, Illinois—his first namesake town—and attended Lincoln College (est. 1865) there my freshman year before transferring to Illinois State University, where I received bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Taught high school English at Pekin, Illinois, for 30 years before taking early retirement and beginning a second teaching career at Missouri State University, where I taught technical and marketing communication for 14 years. For 20+ years, developed award-winning pictorial history website about Lincoln, Illinois. Self-published an award-winning book, The Town Abraham Lincoln Warned: The Living Namesake Heritage of Lincoln, Illinois. Self-published book: Inventing Lincoln: Approaches to His Rhetoric (please google those titles). Published articles about Lincoln’s compositions—speeches and other writings—in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, The Lincoln Herald, and Lincoln Lore.
Awards:
Selected Titles
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Inventing Lincoln: Approaches to His Rhetoric ISBN: 9781540745644 OCLC: 989882845 CreateSpace 2017 This book examines how Lincoln's rhetoric has been treated in twenty-one Lincoln biographies, from 1872 to 2016, and thirty-six rhetorical studies, from 1900 to 2015: five books and thirty-one book chapters or essays published in peer-reviewed journals largely unfamiliar to the general public--Back cover. |
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Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Volume 35. Complete. Numbers 1 & 2. ISBN: B077LCHYKV OCLC: Abraham Lincoln Association 2014 Academic Journal |
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Lincoln's Rise to Eloquence: How He Gained the Presidential Nomination ISBN: 0252045947 OCLC: University of Illinois Press 2024 At turns eloquent and earthy, Abraham Lincoln’s rhetoric played a vital role in his success as a politician and statesman. D. Leigh Henson examines Lincoln’s pre-presidential development as a rhetorician, the purposes and methods behind his speeches and writings, and how the works contributed to his political rise. Lincoln’s close study of the rhetorical process drew on sources that ranged from classical writings to foundational American documents to the speeches of Daniel Webster. As Henson shows, Lincoln applied his learning to combine arguments on historical, legal, and moral grounds with appeals to emotion and his own carefully curated credibility. Henson also explores Lincoln’s use of the elements of structural design to craft coherent arguments that, whatever their varying purposes, used direct and plain language to reach diverse audiences--and laid the groundwork for his rise to the White House. Insightful and revealing, Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence follows Lincoln from his early career through the years-long clashes with Stephen A. Douglas to trace the future president’s evolution as a communicator and politician. |
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The Town Abraham Lincoln Warned ISBN: 1450754155 OCLC: 728025911 D.L. Henson, Springfield, Mo. : ©2011. Graphically presents the saga of how the first town named for the legendary president before he became famous has explored and exploited its connections to him to create civic pride and strengthen its economy through tourism. Overall, this is a |