228 notes to chapter 4
- Matthew Arnold, Reports on Elementary Schools General Report 1852–1882,
- For instance, comparing the 1876 Classified Catalogue of School, College, Classi-
cal, Technical, and General Educational Works (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and
Rivington) with the 1887 Catalogue is already a daunting task. As stated in the preface
to the 1876 edition, the 1871 catalogue was “simply a classified list of eight or nine
thousand Educational books now in use in this country, issued by nearly one hundred
and fifty publishers.” But by 1876, the number of titles presented to the reader is nearer
15,000. Of these, the 1876 edition contained over 600 titles listed on classical sub-
jects, including individual authors in the original or translation (i.e., Aeschylus, Plato),
212 titles under the heading Greek, and 255 under Latin (including testament stud-
ies) for a total of roughly 1,070 classical entries. For English subjects in 1876, authors
are listed together under “English ‘classics’” and total only 113, with nearly 1,000 titles
listed under English in total (Anglo-Saxon 15; Elocution 36; Grammar and Composi-
tion 315; Literature 84; Poetry 54; Primers 89; Pronunciation 7; Readers 190; Spell-
ing and Dictation 93; Rhyming Dictionary 2). Compare these numbers with the 1887
edition, which gives “nearer twenty-five thousand” titles, where there are over 2,445
entries for classical languages (600 in Latin and 345 in Greek) and over 1,700 entries
for English (Anglo-Saxon 17; Elocution 48; Grammar, Composition and Dictation
[formerly with spelling ] 565—a huge increase; Literature 67; Parsing [new category]
21; Poetry 100 [nearly double the number from 1876]; Primers 123; Pronunciation 8;
Readers 233; Spelling 109; English “Classics” 300 [more than double the number
from 1876], and an additional single author category, Shakespeare 110). - Michael, The Teaching of English from the Sixteenth Century to 1870; Görlach,
An Annotated Bibliography of Nineteenth-Century Grammars of English. As I discussed
in chapter 1, there is much work to be done in evaluating how often these books were
used, and by what classes. - Arnold, 120.
- The Chambers’s series was reprinted in 1870, 1871, 1873, 1880, and 1887, sup-
plementing this selection, in 1879 and 1894, with a series of National Reading Books.
Chambers also published a Poetical Reader in 1865. - The poem is titled “My Land.” In an 1855 Irish Quarterly Review article by
“N.J.G.,” titled “A Quartette of Irish Poets,” that reviewed The Poems of Thomas Davis,
Now First Collected. With Notes and Historical Illustrations (Dublin: James Duffy,
1853), the cultivating powers of poetry are directed particularly toward Irish
writers:
If, by proper training or natural inclination, Irishmen would direct their intel-
lectual powers to the cultivation of literature . . . it is not difficult to conceive
how much brilliant success must attend their efforts. . . . There is nothing that
would tend more surely to improve the national mind than a general cultivation
of poetry: the more we would see our old traditions enlarged and decked out in
poetic dress, the more, naturally, we should value them, and the more strongly
attached we should be to the localities which gave them birth. . . . It is needless
to say what a beneficial effect this movement would have on the national charac-
ter: a morally independent feeling would of necessity be inculcated, and every-
thing which we are taught to consider as arising from virtuous principles and