In:Learning to Read, Learning Religion: Catechism primers in Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries
Edited by Britta Juska-Bacher, M.O. Grenby, Tuija Laine and Wendelin Sroka
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 14] 2023
► pp. 177–190
3.9Catechism primers in England
Editor
Published online: 6 January 2023
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.14.16gre
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.14.16gre
Article outline
- Schooling and religion in England: Sixteenth to nineteenth century
- Primers and catechisms in England
- State of research and availability of sources
- Primer catechisms and catechism primers
- Authorship and use
- Later history
- Two examples of primers
Reading primers and catechisms (in chronological order) Secondary sources
References (36)
[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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.