New England Primer

a famous first reader at one time popular in the colonies. It was compiled by Benjamin Harris, who, about 1690, abridged the New England Primer from an early work known as the Protestant Tutor. The Primer was bound originally in thin sheets of wood covered with paper. It was embellished with cuts and purported to be an easy and pleasant guide to the art of reading. It opened with a woodcut of "Good Boys at their Books," and an announcement that:

Then follow the capitals and the small letters. They are followed by easy syllables for children, as ab, eb, ib, and ba, be, bi; readily recognized as the forerunners of the old Webster Spelling Book. A few word lists of one, two, three, four, five, and six syllables respectively precede the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed. A few pages are occupied with pictures, one for each letter, an apple for A, a cat for C, an owl for O, a squirrel for S, a whale for W, etc. Moral announcements are not lacking such as:

There are in all about three score small wood cuts with appropriate remarks and mottoes. Very crude the cuts seem now. A score or two of Scriptural quotations, Dr. Watts' Cradle Hymn, beginning, "Hush my dear, lie still and slumber," "Now I lay Me," and the Shorter Westminster Catechism, are included in the contents. It is estimated that no less than 2,000,000 copies of the Primer were sold in the eighteenth century. Possibly fifty copies are extant, representing forty editions. See Noah Webster