3.9

Catechism primers in England

Reading primers and catechisms (in chronological order)

[Note: most of these titles are available via ProQuest’s Early English Books Online or Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online.]

Anon. c.

1537–42 The ABC with the Pater Noster, Ave, Credo and X Commaundements in Englyshe, Newly Translated and Set Forthe at the Kyngs Most Gracyouse Commaundement. London: Richard Lant.

Anon. c.

1551 The ABC with the Catechisme, That is to Say an Instruction to be [Taught and] Learned by Every Childe [Person], Before He be Brought to be Confirmed by the Bishop. Various imprints.

Anon. c.

1570 The Primer and Catechisme. Various imprints.

Vaux, Laurence

1580 Godly Contemplations for the Unlearned. Rothomagi [Rouen]: Henricum Mareschalum.

Stockwood, John

1580 A Short Catechisme for Householders. With Prayerse to the Same Adioyning. London: John Charlewood.

Coote, Edmund

1596 The English school-master, teaching all his scholars, of what age forever the most easie, short, and perfect order of distinct reading, and true writing our English tongue, that hath ever yet been known or published by any. London: Company of Stationers.

Owen, John

1652 The Primer: or, An Easie Way to Teach Children the True Reading of English. With a Necessary Catechisme, to Instruct Youth in the Grounds of Christian Religion. London: Company of Stationers.

Taylor, Jeremy

1652 A short catechism for the institution of young persons in the Christian religion to which is added, an explication of the Apostolical Creed, easie and useful for these times. Composed for the use of the schools in South-Wales. London: R. Royston.

Anon.

1698 The ABC with the Catechism, That is to say an Instruction to be Learned of Every Person, Before he be Brought to be Confirmed by the Bishop. London: Stationers.

Keach, Benjamin

1763 Instructions for Children: Or, The Child’s and Youth’s Delight. Southwark: John Robinson.

Watts, Isaac

1730 Catechisms: or, Instructions in the Principles of Christian Religion, and the History of Scripture, Composed for Children and Youth, According to their Different Ages. London: E. Matthews.

[Fox,] G[eorge] & H[ookes, ]E[llis]

1670 A Primmer and Catechism for Children: or a Plain and Easie Way for Children to Learn to Spell and Read Perfectly in a Little Time. [London]: n. p.

Anon.

1743 The Child’s New Play-Thing: Being a Spelling-Book Intended To make the Learning to Read, a Diversion instead of a Task. London: M. Cooper.

Fisher, Daniel

1759 The Child's Christian Education: or, Spelling and Reading Made Easy. London: B. Dod.

Darby, Abiah

1763 Useful Instruction for Children 1754 London: Luke Hinde.

Joseph Priestley

1767 A Catechism, for Children, and Young Persons. London: J. Johnson.

Claus, Daniel

1781 A Primer for the Use of the Mohawk Children: To Acquire the Spelling and Reading of their own, as well as to get acquainted with the English Tongue. Montreal: F. Mesplets.

Anon.

1799 The Child's New Spelling Primer; or, First book for children. To which is added the stories of Cinderilla, and the Little Red Riding Hood. Dublin: T. Wilkinson.

Anon.

1804 The ABC with the Catechism, That is to say an Instruction to be Learned of Every Person, Before he be Brought to be Confirmed by the Bishop. Salisbury: B. C. Collins.

Secondary sources

Avery, Gillian

1999 Origins and English Predecessors of the New England Primer. Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 108, i: 33–62.

Bannet, Eve Tavor

2017 Eighteenth-Century Manners of Reading: Print Culture and Popular Instruction in the Anglophone Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Blamires, David

2012 Early Quaker Educational Books for Children. Journal of the Friends Historical Society 63: 20–30.

Butterworth, Charles C.

1949 Early Primers for the Use of Children. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 43: 374–8.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

1987 The Riverside Chaucer, third edition, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gadd, Ian

2016 The Stationers’ Company in England before 1710. In Research handbook on the history of copyright law, I. Alexander, I. & H. T. Gómez-Arostegui (eds), 81–95. Cheltenham: Elgar.

Green, Ian M.

1996 The Christian's ABC. Catechisms and catechizing in England c. 1530–1740. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hoole, Charles

1661 A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole in Four Small Treatises. London: Andrew Crook.

Kintgen, Eugene R.

1996 Reading in Tudor England. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Lamb, Edel

2018 Reading Children in Early Modern Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Leicester, Paul

(ed) 1897 The New England Primer. A History of its Origin and Development with a Reprint of the Unique Copy of the Earliest Known Edition. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co.

Martin, Mary Clare

2019 Catechizing at Home, 1740–1870: Instruction, Communication and Denomination. Studies in Church History 55: 256–273.

McQuade, Paula

2017 Catechisms and Women's Writing in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Monaghan, E. Jennifer

(2005) Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America. Amhurst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

1762, 1979 Emile or On Education. Introduced, translated, and edited by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books.

Wakely-Mulroney, Katherine

2019 Riddling the Catechism in Early Children’s Literature. The Review of English Studies 70: 272–290.

Walsham, Alexandra

2017 Wholesome Milk and Strong Meat: Peter Canisius’s Catechisms and the Conversion of Protestant Britain. In Translating Catechisms, Translating Cultures: The Expansion of Catholicism, Antje Flüchter & Rouven Wirbser (eds), 92–128. Leiden: Brill.