McGuffey's Readers

Abstract

McGuffey's Readers D. Thomas Hanks Jr. (bio) The Annotated McGuffey: Selections from the McGuffey Eclectic Readers, 1836-1920, by Stanley W. Lindberg. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976. As title and subtitle show, Lindberg presents both an annotated and an anthologized McGuffey in this volume. A reviewer, then, must ask three questions: Do the McGuffey Readers merit such attention? If so, are the annotations valuable? And are the selections representative? The Readers do merit our attention. As Lindberg notes in a brief but helpful introduction, they were America's major schoolbooks for over seventy-five years, appearing in 122,000,000 copies and three major revisions between 1836 and 1920. (They have not yet gone out of print in 1980.) Whether or not the Readers actually held and shaped "the minds of several generations of Americans," as Lindberg suggests (p. xv), clearly they have been a major element in our educational history. For the most part Lindberg annotates his text well, although there are some flaws. A few times he falls into cuteness, as in his metaphorical description of Irving's "Boblink" as a piece "blended together with moralizing, seasoned with gentle humor, and served with a fluid and inviting style (garnished just a bit too heavily)" (p. 253). Several notes appear later in the text than they should; for example, Lindberg reproduces hyphenating such as "lit-tle la-dy" on page 5 of his text but fails to explain the hyphenation until page 52. Two or three similarly delayed notes appear later in the book. The most serious flaw in the notes is inadequate documentation. Lindberg notes of "The Dying Boy" (pp. 78-79) that the author of this "Anonymous" selection was actually Mrs. Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney, whose capsule biography he presents. He cites no source for his information, as he cites none for all such material throughout the book. Anyone wanting to find out more about Mrs. [End Page 200] Sigourney et al., then, will find no help here or in the book's rather sparse bibliography (eighteen items). In a text of this sort—which could be a major aid to scholars—it is strange to find neglected such an elementary concern as adequate footnoting. In spite of these imperfections, the annotations are on the whole valuable. Some are certainly disillusioning: many readers will be saddened to learn that the "I cannot tell a lie" story of George Washington and the cherry tree was a fabrication of "Parson" Mason Locke Weems (pp. 44-46), and that Patrick Henry's immortal "Give me liberty or give me death" speech may well be another such fabrication (pp. 225, 327-30). Many, however, will be interested in Lindberg's comments on the history of illustrations in the Readers (pp. 8, 19, 111-13, 281), or in the biographies of the various authors in the Readers; all will be pleased to see properly acknowledged here the previously unattributed works of such authors as Maria Edgeworth in notes like this one: This is one of the lessons which McGuffey (and nearly all his competitors) "borrowed" from the famous children's tales of Maria Edgeworth. It has appeared in every edition of the McGuffeys since 1841—never once carrying any acknowledgement of authorship. British authors were gleefully pirated at will by American publishers who paid no royalties, and often—especially if they were women—these authors were not even credited by name. [Note on "Waste Not, Want Not," p. 150.] There are additional strengths in Lindberg's annotations, notably in his comments on the McGuffey attitudes toward morality, religion, death, stereotyped sex roles, and so on. The sociological role of the Readers interests Lindberg as much as does their literary and educational value; the reader will find his or her own interests stirred in all three areas. Turning from annotations to selections and judging largely by comparisons with the latest "revised edition" of the six Readers (New York: American Book Co., 1921—essentially the 1879 edition), one must feel that Lindberg's selections are representative of the whole of the McGuffeys. He has taken lessons both from the 1879 edition and from the no-longer-available early Readers of 1836...