McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, by William Holmes McGuffey, is a 19th-century American schoolbook and graded anthology of prose and verse for young readers. Its lessons combine reading practice with moral instruction and elocution, using selections from literature. It offers a vivid window into historic classrooms and the values once taught through literacy.
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Cover illustration generated by AI.
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
Produced by Don Kostuch
[Transcriber's Note:
Welcome to the schoolroom of 1900. The moral tone is plain.
"She is kind to the old blind man."
The exercises are still suitable, and perhaps more helpful than some contemporary alternatives. Much is left to the teacher. Explanations given in the text are enough to get started teaching a child to read and write. Counting in Roman numerals is included as a bonus in the form of lesson numbers.
The form of contractions includes a space. The contemporary word
"don't" was rendered as "do n't".
The author, not listed in the text, is William Holmes McGuffey.
Passages using non-ASCI characters are approximately rendered in this text version. See the PDF or DOC versions for the original images.
The section numbers are decimal in the Table of Contents but are in
Roman Numerals in the body.
Page headings are removed, but section titles are followed by the page on which they appear.
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