McGuffey Readers

William Holmes McGuffey established a reputation as a lecturer on moral and biblical subjects while he was teaching at Miami University. In 1835, the small Cincinnati publishing firm of Truman and Smith asked him to create a series of four graded readers for primary level students. He had been recommended for the job by longtime friend Harriet Beecher Stowe. He completed the first two readers within a year of signing his contract, receiving a fee of $1,000 ($ in dollars). He compiled the first four readers (1836–1837 edition), while the fifth and sixth were created by his brother Alexander Hamilton McGuffey during the 1840s. The series consisted of stories, poems, essays, and speeches. The advanced Readers contained excerpts from the works of well-regarded English and American writers and politicians such as Lord Byron, John Milton, and Daniel Webster. Most schools of the 19th century used only the first two in the series of McGuffey's four readers. The first Reader taught reading by using the phonics method, the identification of letters and their arrangement into words, and aided with slate work. The second Reader was used once students could read. It helped them to understand the meaning of sentences, while providing vivid stories which children could remember. The third Reader taught the definitions of words and was written at a level equivalent to the modern 5th or 6th grade. The fourth Reader was written for the highest levels of ability on the grammar school level. == Influence ==

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ron Powers notes that the Readers affected the first mass-educated and mass-literate generation in the modern world. The books made Shakespeare's plays widely known in America. Author Hamlin Garland said "I got my first taste of Shakespeare from the selected scenes which I read in these books." Students were encouraged to memorize, and read aloud, classic orations such as ''Antony's Oration over Dead Caesar's Body and Henry V. to His Troops.'' Shakespeare's tragedies were represented by The Hamlet Soliloquy. The McGuffey canon contributed to an American belief in Shakespeare's authority as second only to the Bible. childhood set of McGuffey's Readers Industrialist Henry Ford cited McGuffey's Readers as one of his most important childhood influences. Otherwise Ford was poorly educated and read little. He was an avid fan of McGuffey's Readers first editions. Ford republished all six Readers from the 1867 edition and donated complete sets of them to schools across the United States. In 1934, Ford had the log cabin where McGuffey was born moved to Greenfield Village, Ford's museum of Americana at Dearborn, Michigan. In 1936, Ford sponsored a collection of excerpts from McGuffey Readers. American composer Burrill Phillips composed a work entitled ''Selections from McGuffey's Reader'', for orchestra, based on poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. It was completed in 1933. In the late 20th century many evangelical homeschooling parents used the McGuffey Readers to recapture 19th century conservative values for their children. ==See also==