Beginning publication in 1836, the McGuffey series of readers became the predominant textbook used in American elementary schools throughout the rest of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th.
Having scanned some images from an 1896 edition of the Fourth reader, I began trying to get some more info.
Looking around for some background online, there's plenty of information available about them; from their history and that of their creator
William Holmes McGuffey, different viewpoints regarding their Christian values (and how that relates to their continued publication - -
- - You can also read the text of various editions of the series at Project Gutenberg - -
- - All of which is well and good, but one piece of info I'm still not finding is reference to the artists who provided the illustrations.
It's not surprising that the illustrators went uncredited in the pages of original versions of the texts, but shouldn't that have been rectified at some point?
Maybe I'm just not looking in the correct place, but it's The Internet - - it shouldn't be that difficult...
Some of the illustrators' signatures visible in these scans are fairly legible, others are not.
Any one out there who can shed some light on who these illustrators were?
Leave a comment, drop a line, your help is appreciated. Thanks for sharing!
Beginning publication in 1836, the McGuffey series of readers became the predominant textbook used in American elementary schools throughout the rest of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th.
