History of the English Language

"LONDONPrinted for J. NEWBERY, at the Bible and Sun in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1765.[Price: Six-Pence]"

by the editor, there is chapter 1, "How and about Little Margery and her Brother"

After the preface "Care and Discontent shortened the Days of Little Margery's Father.--He was forced from his Family, and seized with a violent Fever in a Place where Dr. James's Powder was not to be had, and where he died miserably. Margery's poor Mother survived the Loss of her Husband but a few Days, and died of a broken Heart, leaving Margery and her little Brother to the wide World; but, poor Woman, it would have melted your Heart to have seen how frequently she heaved up her Head, while she lay speechless, to survey with languishing Looks her little Orphans, as much as to say, Do Tommy, do Margery, come with me. They cried, poor Things, and she sighed away her Soul; and I hope is happy. It would both have excited your Pity, and have done your Heart good,

will always be the Case, while People love Money better than Virtue, or better than they do GOD Almighty. But such wicked Folks, who love nothing but Money, and are proud and despise any good in the End, as we shall see by and by.”the Poor, never come to

The story aims to keep the attention of the reader with these cataphoric references. There is going to be a happy ending and wicked people will fall down. Then there is Chapter “How and about Mr. Smith”.

“Mr. Smith was a very worthy Clergyman, who lived in the Parish where Little Margery and Tommy were born; and having a Relation come to see him, who was a charitable good Man, he sent for these Children to him. The Gentleman ordered Little Margery a new Pair of Shoes, gave Mr. Smith some Money to buy her Cloathes; and said, he would take Tommy and make him a little Sailor; and accordingly had a Jacket and Trowsers made for him, in which he now appears. Pray look at him.”

It was not unusual for children to become soldiers,

Sailors, and work. Child labour was a very serious problem until the first decade of the 20th century. (Lewis Hine →1910s, 1020s: Child labour photos, to promote the abolition of child labour). https://www.loc.gov/collections/national-child-labor-committee/about-this-collection/

In late modern literature children were always poor orphans, abandoned and so on: to some extent it is sentimental literature but the social condition of those children was quite bad up to the first decade of the 20th century. https://www.bl.uk/childrens-books/articles/books-to-teach-you-how-to-read

Hornbooks“Fast-forward a few centuries and we find children being taught from primers, or sometimes ‘hornbooks’, both of which appeared in England and elsewhere from about 1450. Hornbooks weren’t really books at all, but were actually boards or paddles, made of wood, leather or bone. You couldn’t engrave a lot of information on to a hornbook;–usually they just contained the alphabet.

Orbis sensualium pictus This is probably the first bookto teach children withpictures. It was published in1659 in London. There is apicture of the animal, thelatinate phrase and thetranslation into early modernEnglish, next to that we havea syllable and a consonant.Latin was written in Romanfont and Early modernEnglish used the black letterfont so it is easier todistinguish the two texts.Children were also taught thesounds of different animals.

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book"A Little Pretty POCKET-BOOK, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little MasterTommy, and Pretty Miss Polly, first published in 1744, is generally considered to be the first bookdirected at children. [...] As the title page states, the toys were intended to 'infallibly makespecificallyTommy a good boy, and Polly a good girl'." This book is intended to be a new way toteach children to use the English

girls.“To which is added, A LITTLE SONG-BOOK, being a new attempt to teach children the useEnglish alphabet, by Way of Diversion.”of theThe capitalization of letters may seem strange, because late modern capitalization was morecomplex than present day capitalization: in late modern times it was still possible to capitalizenouns and verbs for emphasis. In English capitalization was simplified with the passing of time(whereas German still has a more complex capitalization system). The same can be said as faras spelling is concerned: long “S” looks like “f”.These stories also tell us something about late modern games, how children were supposed todress. “The little h Play” is about cricketand cricket becomes a metaphor→ moral: cricket changescontinuously, we make a mistakeand we realize it when it is toolate to do anything about it. Toillustrate the letter there is apicture of children playing , thena rhyme and then a

"The great K play": swimming is used to talk about water and the moral point is to think before you speak, because once the words are uttered, you cannot take them back, once you have said something, there is nothing you can do about it.

Then there is the letter written by Jack, The Giant-Killer.

"I am Your affectionate Friend, JACK the Giant-killer" is the concluding salutation which echoes the typical concluding salutation of familiar letters.

The History of an Apple Pie; written by Z. This book was published presumably in the 18th century in London. Click here to learn more.

We can assume that this was a book to homeschool girls by the drawing: it might be a mother and a governess or an older girl teaching younger children. [see all the letters]

There is the representation of both capital and smaller letters.

Then there is a sort of "guide" to learn how to write: first you learn how to write single letters, then...

You begin to combine letters composing syllables, then you form words of a few syllables. Gradually you begin to form short sentences only including words of one syllable meant to educate you. These sentences also teach you how to behave. Then we also find lexical items with different vowels and consonants. Animal sounds were very popular strategies to teach children to read. Then we find rather complex sentences from the syntactic point of view, but the audience is already familiar with them. At the end we find a section that is very helpful to learn vocabulary, because there are many different lexical items concerning different topics, describing late modern houses. On the last page there were often advertisements for other books.

This is a description of the kind of book that you would have if you bought that. Then there is a list of similar books: they stress the usefulness of the knowledge → they were books meant to educate children and teach them about useful knowledge. Knowledge is important.

because it can lead somewhere, can teach children something (ex. “The Ocean and its inhabitants, with their uses to man”) → useful knowledge was also useful for people who wanted to educate themselves, to improve their status in life. Adaptations of the Bible for children were also very popular. “Ditto” means “As above”. There were encyclopedias (as the “Penny Cyclopaedia”) published by the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge”, a society that was established in London for the diffusion of knowledge among people who could not afford much education and therefore had to educate themselves. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project/institutions/sduk.htm “The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) was a pioneer of cheap educational publishing in the 1820s. It shared a large number of its founders and supporters with the new University of London (later University College London) on Gower Street. Among the authors of its

Treatises were several Professors at the University of London, including Augustus De Morgan, John Lindley, Anthony Todd Thomson, and Dionysius Lardner. George Long, first Professor of Greek at the University, edited the SDUK's Quarterly Journal of Education (1831–1835) and its Penny Cyclopaedia in 29 volumes (1833–1846). William Tooke, solicitor in Bedford Row, who lived in Russell Square, was Treasurer of the SDUK and a member of the Council of the University of London.

Source: https://histecon.fas.harvard.edu/visualizing/sduk/

"Operating from London between 1826 and 1848, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) was one of the most ambitious educational projects of the nineteenth"