A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING BUSINESS IN THE UNITEDSTATES
1“The history of a nation,” one dictionary says, “is a systematic recordof past events; especially the record of events in which man has takenpart.”
The history of the educational publishing business in Americais likewise a systematic record of past events in which man hastaken part. The events of this history include the beginning, thedevelopment, and the wonderful improvement in books and book-makingsince 1691, and the men and women who have taken part in these eventsare authors and publishers.
Starr King, the eloquent preacher and orator whose powerful argumentsin 1860 and ’61 aided mightily in saving California for the Union, wasonce riding on a very slow train from Boston to New York with a friend,who asked Mr. King if he were going to fill a New York pulpit on thefollowing day, which was Sunday.
“No,” replied the great preacher, “I am not going to fill, but I amgoing to rattle ’round in Henry Ward Beecher’s.”
A comprehensive history of the American educational publishing businesshas never been prepared, although a number of writers have producedinteresting and instructive books, booklets, periodical, magazine,and newspaper articles covering in some detail such portions of thishistory as engaged their attention. For instance, Dr. Meriwetherand Professor Johnson have rather thoroughly and with reasonablysatisfactory completeness given us an account of the schoolbooks ofcolonial times and of the clumsy and slow process of manufacturingand distributing them. They have described in considerable detail thegruesome text matter of these early books, and their ugly and almostludicrous illustrations.
Ford has given us a most interesting and historically valuable accountof the oldest American schoolbook, The New England Primer, preparedand printed by Benjamin Harris of Boston, the second edition appearingin 1691. This was printed 44 years after Massachusetts had passed alaw requiring each town of fifty householders to “appoint one withintheir town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to writeand read.” Others have written of the first Arithmetic, prepared byNicholas Pike of Newburyport, Mass., and printed in 1788; of thefirst American Geography, written by the Reverend Jedidiah Morseof Charlestown, Mass., and published at New Haven in 1784; of thefirst pedagogical and educational book, written by Christopher Dock,America’s pioneer writer on education, a second edition of which waspublished by Christopher Sower of Philadelphia in 1770. Much has beenwritten concerning the2 world-famous Blue Back Speller, prepared byDr. Noah Webster and printed at Hartford in 1793; of Peter Parley’sGeographies, the first of which was published in 1829. Dr. Henry H.Vail, formerly connected with the American Book Company, has written amost interesting history of the McGuffey Readers, of which the firsttwo books of the four-book series were copyrighted in 1836 and thesecond two in 1837.
Then there have been published such books as The House of Harper,which gives the history of a business concern now more than a hundredyears old; a most charmingly written biography of Henry O. Houghton,the founder of the house now known as the Houghton Mifflin Company;a memorial volume giving in some detail the story of the life andactivities of Henry Ivison, of the old firm of Ivison, Blakeman,Taylor & Company; a book giving a rather complete account