Study on the Sense of Humor and Rhetorical Devices of Bill Bryson from "Florence" (Volume 1) Bill Bryson, born in December 8, 1951, is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, the English language and recently scientific subjects and Shakespeare. The first time Bryson visited England in 1973 on a tour of Europe and decided to stay after he landed job in a psychiatric hospital. He met a nurse there, whose name was Cynthia Billen, and then they got married. In 1995, Bryson, with his family, returned to America, in order to complete his college degree. But he showed his determination in that he and his family remained until 2003. This essay “Florence” is an excerpt from his travelogue "Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe" written in 1991. There is actually a pun in the title “Neither Here Nor There” which reveals his feelings that he didn’t belong to America or England as he traveled around the world. "The Times" has suggested that Bryson is one of the most famous authors of humorous books on travel currently living in the world. And I can’t agree more that he is definitely good partner for traveling, this is because everyone who read his works will constantly have a good time and suddenly find themselves experiencing a real trip with a high degree of involvement. Bryson specializes in a typical sense of humor, since he married an English wife, and he was exposed to English culture and quickly learned cerebral British humor. Another point from this essay that attracts me is that Bryson has a keen eye for details and there are plenty of rhetorical devices in this writing, such as hyperbole, irony, oxymoron, personification, parallelism, simile and metaphor.