The above title was given to William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873). He was an American educator, was the president of Ohio University, professor at the University of Virginia and the department chairman at the Miami University of Ohio. McGuffey published the first edition of his McGuffey’s Reader in 1836. This was the mainstay in public education in America till 1920. It became one o f the most widely used and influential textbooks of all time and millions of American children learned to read and write from that reader.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that a number of these readers have been reprinted and were to be found in one of our local bookstores.
As a sample of the instruction give, one can turn to Lesson 37 of McGuffey’s Eclectic First Reader which is entitled “Evening Prayer.”
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