1899 printing of 1899 copyrighted text. The author is credited as the author of Beginners' Readers I, II, III and Vivid Scenes in American History. The text is a teacher's manual to accompany Letters From Queer Folk, a composition book aimed at enhancing student learning by drafting correspondence with imagined people. The text covers various genres of writing such as business, social, telegrams, advertisements, receipts. It addresses particular skills such as paragraphing, vocabulary, punctuation, and arrangement. The Schultz Archive copy is the entire text.
1842 printing. No copyright date given. No information on the authors is provided. The authors' text begins with a brief discussion of the inefficacy of the previous method of instructing grammar and composition, which included a heavy emphasis on rule memorization and the reading--and subsequent copying of--classic texts. The authors, instead, advocate a more "natural" approach to the acquisition of grammar and composition: practice, object use and familiarity. The authors propose students should be given the chance to copy short pieces by good authors to learn neatness and exactness. They then work with writing about familiar objects, exchanging their work and correcting each other's errors, discussing their work as a class, then having their instructor provide feedback for correction. The authors suggest beginning with concrete objects that are near the students and progressing through to more complex abstract ideas and series of objects in order to assist in the acquisition of composition abilities. The Schultz Archive includes the complete text (although it is a fairly short text), and the quality of the scans is fairly good; however, there are a few places where markings on the text are somewhat distracting.
No edition or printing information is included on this copy. No author is credited, although Whitney, Jocelyn, and Annin are credited as illustrators. It includes basic information on composing, including advice on penmanship, titling, margins, paragraphs, spelling, capital letters, punctuation, arranging sentences, style (purity, precision, clearness, strength, harmony, unity), and modes (debates, letters). The majority of the text is a collection of ornate illustrations for the purpose of aiding composition development. Each illustration is accompanied with advice on how to elaborate on subjects within the illustration.