Word: mcguffey
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Into the first volume Dr. McGuffey put monosyllabic fables about busy bees, lame dogs, silly geese, kind cows, cruel boys, inventing the formula of printing a dogmatic MORAL at the end of each lesson, rigidly adhered to throughout the series...
There were two McGuffeys and their series (five times revised) was last reprinted by the American Book Co. (Cincinnati) in 1901. In 1835, Dr. William Holmes McGuffey, then president and professor of "Moral and Intellectual Philosophy" at Cincinnati College, was asked by the Messrs. Truman & Smith, local publishers, to prepare a series of eclectic readings for the young. This he did, in 18 months, paying one of his students $5 to copy out the selections...
...Second Reader contained more complicated animal stories, also some frightening ones ? big bears, fierce tigers ? and the im mortal legend of George Washing ton and his father's cherry tree. In Dr. McGuffey's stories, children got bright new silver dollars when good, said "No, ma'am" to their mothers. Their rooms were "cham bers." Their dog was Rover. People went "down cellar...
These four volumes were enlarged in 1838 and in 1841 the publishers felt they must issue a still more advanced reader. But Dr. McGuffey had left Cincinnati. So they engaged his smart brother, Alexander H. McGuffey, 16 years younger, a lawyer and Hebrew scholar. He it was who contributed the Rhetorical Guide which, later called McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, easily rivaled all the original four readers for popularity and inspired the elder brother to compile a prodigious Sixth. The Guide contained selections chosen to improve inflection and memory as well as morals and sentiment. There were the "Village Black...
...potent McGuffey's were never without competition. There were the Goodrich, and Harvey's, and Pickett's. But not for 40 years, in 1877, were the McGuffey's seriously threatened. Then appeared the Appleton readers, prepared by the school superintendents of St. Louis and Cleveland with a Yale professor. It was a lavish series, handsomely illustrated. The McGuffey's survived this onslaught only by those sterling moral values which had made them a byword in the land, a staple commodity at every general store. That they have now vanished utterly from schoolrooms will be difficult to prove, especially since they...