New England Primer

New England Primer,

famous American school book, first published before 1690. Its compiler was Benjamin Harris, an English printer who emigrated to Boston. This was the book from which most of the children of colonial America learned to read. The letters of the alphabet were illustrated by rhymed couplets (e.g., "The idle Fool/Is whipt at School") and woodcuts; the lessons frequently contained moral texts based on the Old Testament. The book was reprinted many times, with various changes in text and even in title. Although it has been estimated that as many as 2 million were sold in the 18th cent., copies of the book are now rare.

Bibliography

See P. L. Ford, ed., The New England Primer (1897, repr. 1962).

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Pearl, therefore -- so large were the attainments of her three years' lifetime -- could have borne a fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works.
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A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had begun a review of her early studies in the New England Primer, with a view to prepare herself for the office of instructress.
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The New England Primer was the textbook used to teach generations of Americans how to read.
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A poem from an old New England primer, which Robert Frost was fond of quoting, explains it this way:
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