American
Literature Textbooks
Sarah K. Wilson
In the 1850s, most high schools began
to teach English as a separate subject – with the focus on the study
of English literature and not elocution.
As Ian Michael describes it, literature
began to be taught in schools and not merely presented
as models for personal composition.
These literature books were usually arranged chronologically where
the readers were arranged thematically.
The focus of the literature books was on the literature itself and
the authors who had written the works.
Short biographies were often included.
The literary selections included in readers were chosen because
of their ability to promote morality, bring amusement, or develop taste.
Selections in literature books were chosen by their literary greatness.
Jonathan Kramnick claims
that at this time, a literary canon of great authors was already in place. With the wide availability of print texts in the late-eighteenth
century, contemporary literature that was suddenly so widely consumed began
to be discredited as merely “popular literature.”
The literature of the past began to be venerated as great, with the
literature of the Greeks and Romans the greatest of all. He further argues
that the English literary canon actually came into existence in the middle
of the 1700s as people began to judge all literature by classical standards
including beauty, imagination, and sublimity. Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser were
universally admired by these standards and set the English standard of canonization
for many critics.
Kramnick’s observations may help explain the evolution
of literature books in schools. Many
early literature textbooks included only classical Greek and Roman literature.
Books such as R. W. Browne’s 1857 A History of Roman Classical
Literature and James S. S. Baird’s The Classical Manual of
1868 are examples of this trend.
However, the most popular literature books were those of
English and American literature. The
reticence toward contemporary literature is continued in these books –
the prefaces often state that no living authors have been included.
The similarities in the contents of these books are striking.
Most all of the literature books seem to include many authors who are
still part of the canon taught in schools today including Shakespeare, Milton,
Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Scott, Irving, and Franklin.
Thomas B. Shaw wrote one of the first and what proved to
be the most popular of these, Outlines
of English Literature, published in London in 1846.
Shaw was a professor in Russia, when he wrote the book. He states in the preface: “The author of the following
pages has been engaged, during some years, as Professor of English Literature
in the Imperial Alexander Lyceum of St. Petersburg; and, both in the discharge
of his duties there and in his private teaching, he has very frequently felt
the want of a Manual, concise but comprehensive, on the subject of his lectures. [. . .]
Induced by these circumstances, the author has endeavoured to produce a volume
which might serve as a useful outline Introduction to English Literature both
to the English and the foreign student.” It is clear that his book was unique for its time in that its
focus was on English literature and its order was chronological, emphasizing
the literature and its contexts as opposed to the lessons it could teach in
elocution, articulation, or morality.
He later wrote A Complete Manual
of English Literature and Choice Specimens of English Literature
before his death in 1862.
While Shaw’s work ignited a trend followed by Charles
Dexter Cleveland in 1848 (A Compendium
of English Literature), John Hart’s Manuals
of 1872, William Swinton’s 1880 Studies in
English Literature, and others, the Shaw manual provides a particularly
revealing look at the evolution of the discipline.
Shaw’s Manual was used directly as the basis
for several other literature textbooks published and popularly used in the
nineteenth century. In 1864,
William Smith published an edition of Shaw’s Manual that included a
“Sketch of American Literature” and several “Notes and Illustrations”
which gave attention to even more authors than Shaw’s original text
had.
Truman J. Backus, in 1878, published Shaw’s
New History of English Literature in which he attempted to revise
the original work to suit the needs of contemporary classrooms. Backus wrote in the preface: “Mr. Shaw sought to ‘render
the work as little dry—as readable, in short—as is consistent
with accuracy and comprehensiveness;’ but his abounding use of relative
constructions and his involved sentences defeated his purpose to some extent;
for they defied the patience of many students. In endeavoring to present the topics in
a clearer style, it has been for me to rewrite many of the chapters.”
Backus goes on to explain that he attempted to omit “authors
who have not contributed to the historical development of our literature”
and instead focus on the most famous writers in an attempt to relieve English
teachers’ “growing conviction that much time is wasted in the
class-room by attempting to learn about too many authors.” While maintaining Shaw’s basic arrangement, Backus attempted
to make it more interesting and focused.
In the 1880s, English education in high school classrooms
seems to have changed again. Universities
began to require entrance exams that included questions relating to English
literature. To prepare students
for these exams, universities released reading lists to teachers in high schools.
These reading lists largely dictated the high school English curriculum;
but, according to Jeanne Gerlach, teachers were frustrated by the large number
of different lists they received and were expected to teach. Therefore, in 1892, a committee comprised
of members of several universities created one standard reading list that
students would be expected to know for the English exams. This soon was referred to as “the
canon” – and it is this canon which is still taught in many high
schools today.
Again, the evolution of Shaw’s Manual reflects
this change in curriculum. In
1889, Truman Backus wrote a new book entitled The
Great English Writers from Chaucer to George Eliot.
In the preface, he explains that “The criticisms most frequently
and urgently offered [of Shaw’s New History] have been hat the
authors discussed are too numerous, and that the literary style of the book
is somewhat too mature for many of the students in whose hands it is placed. Accepting these criticisms, I have attempted
to meet them—not by revision of the new History, but by making
this text-book upon a new plan, discussing only those authors who are very
prominent, and adapting the style and method of the book to student who are
taking their first survey of the History of English Literature.” The book includes 22 chapters and most
of these include an introduction to and selections of only one author.
The
history of English education in the nineteenth century is not a simple, clear-cut
evolution. The changes that seem
to have occurred happened in the midst of complex social and pedagogical contexts
that cannot be ignored, but that cannot be easily discerned. Charles Carpenter asserts that the separate
English entered the curriculum as a separate subject as the readers began
to include more and more literary selections and shift their focus from spelling,
composition, and elocution. Jeanne
Gerlach claims that English studies became important as a result of surging
feelings of nationalism in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Richard Altick, in his book
The English Common Reader: A Social History of
the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900, provides a theory of the emergence
of the canon in education based on the history of reading in England.
He claims that the mid-nineteenth century brought all classes
of people access to literature through libraries, cheap books, and periodicals. Members of the upper class feared that
this access to fiction would lead to immorality and rebellion. Many felt that
the cheap literature was not worth reading at all and looked to educators
to teach children how to recognize good literature from bad (372). Efforts to this end included “primers
of literature, Sir John Lubbock’s much publicized list of the hundred
best books, the lists of the National Home Reading Union, [and] the very occasional
leaflets of suggestions distributed by public libraries” (372).
Ultimately, the burden fell on the schools.
Altick quotes the 1868 Taunton Commission's comment
on the purpose of teaching English literature: “The true purpose of
teaching English literature [is] not . . . to find material with which to
teach English grammar, but to kindle a living interest in the learner’s
mind, to make him feel the force and beauty of which the language is capable,
to refine and elevate his taste. If it could be so taught, . . . the man would probably return
to it when the days of boyhood were over, and many who would never look again
at Horace or Virgil, would be likely to continue to read Shakespeare and Milton
throughout their lives” (qtd. in Altick 183). To accomplish these purposes, to elevate
taste, to develop among all classes an interest in good, moral literature,
the canon was brought to schools.
My own perspective on the history of English education is
based on necessarily limited research.
However, it seems to be certain that the shift in the nineteenth century
from all-encompassing readers to focused literature books was a major turning
point for English education that has greatly influenced the discipline today.
Without an understanding of where we’ve been as English teachers,
it is awfully hard to know where we are and where we should go from here.