William Enfield

William Enfield (29 March 1741 – 3 November 1797) was a British Unitarian minister who published a bestselling book on elocution entitled The Speaker (1774).

His reputation was for bringing those of different views into polite discussion,, and he founded the Speculative Society, including Anglican and nonconformist clergy, and physicians.

Eventually, after the failure of the Feathers Tavern Petition, Enfield changed his position, agreeing with Priestley that Dissenting civil rights were too slow in coming.

His most successful work, however, was The Speaker (1774), an anthology of literary extracts intended to teach elocution, and produced first for his Warrington pupils.

Enfield's Speaker remained in print until the middle of the nineteenth century and inspired other anthologies, such as Mary Wollstonecraft's The Female Reader (1789).