The Eclectic Readers (commonly, but informally known as the McGuffey Readers) were a series of
graded primers for grade levels 1–6. They were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, and are still used today in some private schools and
homeschooling
Homeschooling or home schooling (American English), also known as home education or elective home education (EHE) (British English), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted ...
.
The editors of the Readers were brothers
William Holmes McGuffey and
Alexander Hamilton McGuffey. William created the first four readers and Alexander McGuffey created the fifth and sixth reader.
About 120 million copies of McGuffey's Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the ''Bible'' and ''
Webster's Dictionary
''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the US English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), a US lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's n ...
''.
[ ] Since 1961, they have continued to sell at a rate of some 30,000 copies a year.
Only the ''Ray's Arithmetic'' series (1834–1913) matched it in popularity, written by a colleague of McGuffey's and begun in 1834.
Publication
William Holmes McGuffey established a reputation as a lecturer on moral and biblical subjects while he was teaching at
Miami University
Miami University (informally Miami of Ohio or simply Miami) is a public university, public research university in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the second-oldest List of colleges and universities in Ohio, university in Ohi ...
. In 1835, the small
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...
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
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...
. 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
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-kno ...
,
John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'' was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and politic ...
, and
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress and served as the 14th and 19th United States Secretary of State, U.S. secretary o ...
.
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
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...
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.
McGuffey's Readers were among the first textbooks in the United States designed to be increasingly challenging with each volume. They used word repetition in the text as a learning tool, developing reading skills by challenging students using the books. Sounding-out, enunciation, and accents were emphasized. Colonial-era texts had offered dull lists of 20 to 100 new words per page for memorization. In contrast, McGuffey used new vocabulary words in the context of real literature, gradually introducing new words and carefully repeating the old.
McGuffey believed that teachers, as well as their students, should study the lessons and suggested that they read aloud to their classes. He also listed questions after each story, for he believed that asking questions was critical for a teacher to give instruction. The Readers emphasized spelling, vocabulary, and formal public speaking, which was a more common requirement in 19th-century America than today.
McGuffey is remembered as a conservative theological teacher. He interpreted the goals of public schooling in terms of moral and spiritual education, and attempted to give schools a curriculum that would instill
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...
Calvinist
Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Protestantism, Continenta ...
beliefs and manners in their students. These goals were considered suitable for the relatively homogeneous America of the early- to mid-19th century, though they were less so for the increasingly pluralistic society that developed in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
The content of the readers changed drastically between McGuffey's 1836–1837 edition and the 1879 edition. The revised Readers were compiled to meet the needs of national unity and the dream of an American
melting pot
A melting pot is a Monoculturalism, monocultural metaphor for a wiktionary:heterogeneous, heterogeneous society becoming more wiktionary:homogeneous, homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture; an alternative bei ...
for the world's masses. The
Calvinist
Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Protestantism, Continenta ...
values of salvation, righteousness, and piety were excluded from the later versions, though they had been prominent in the early Readers. The content of the books was secularized and replaced by middle-class
civil religion
Civil religion, also referred to as a civic religion, is the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals, symbols (such as the national flag), and ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, bat ...
, morality, and values. McGuffey's name was featured on these revised editions, yet he neither contributed to them nor approved their content.
Other types of schoolbooks gradually replaced McGuffey's in the academic marketplace. The desire for distinct grade levels and less overtly religious content, and the greater profitability of consumable workbooks all helped to bring about their decline. McGuffey's Readers never entirely disappeared, however. Reprinted versions of his Readers are still in print, and may be purchased in bookstores across the country. Today, McGuffey's Readers are popular among homeschoolers and in some Protestant religious schools.
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.

Industrialist
Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American Technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automob ...
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
Dearborn is a city in Wayne County, Michigan, Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An inner-ring Metro Detroit, suburb of Detroit, Dearborn borders Detroit to the south and west, roughly west of downtown Detroit. In the 2020 United States ...
. 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
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and '' Evangeline''. He was the first American to comp ...
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.
[Johann N. Neem, "The strange afterlife of William McGuffey and his readers." ''The Hedgehog Review'' 20.2 (2018): 114–123]
online
/ref>
See also
* Basal reader
Basal readers are textbooks used to teach reading (process), reading and associated skills to schoolchildren. Commonly called "reading books" or "readers" they are usually published as Anthology, anthologies that combine previously published sh ...
* Primer (textbook)
* Dick and Jane
* Why Johnny Can't Read
References
Bibliography
*
* Corinth, Jacqueline. "'McGuffey's Eclectic Readers' and their Continuing Influence on American Education: A Historical Analysis of the Secondary Literature." ''International Journal of the Book'' 6.1 (2009).
* Kammen, Carol. "The McGuffey Readers." ''Children's Literature'' 5.1 (1976): 58–6
online
* Lindberg, Stanley W. "Institutionalizing a Myth: The McGuffey Readers and the Self‐Made Man." ''Journal of American Culture'' 2.1 (1979): 71–82
excerpt
online review
https://www.jstor.org/stable/367453 online]
* Neem, Johann N. "The strange afterlife of William McGuffey and his readers." ''The Hedgehog Review'' 20.2 (2018): 114–123
online
* Saunders, Dero A. "Social ideas in McGuffey readers." ''Public Opinion Quarterly'' 5.4 (1941): 579–58
online
* Sullivan, Dolores P. ''William Holmes McGuffey: Schoolmaster to the Nation'' (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994).
* Vail, Henry Hobart. ''A history of the McGuffey Readers'' (Burrows Brothers, 1911
online
*
{{refend
External links
From th
Rare Book and Special Collections Division
at the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
Project Gutenberg downloads of McGuffey Readers
1836 introductions
Early childhood education
Early childhood education in the United States
Homeschooling
Series of children's books
Basal readers
Learning to read
Reading (process)