This chronological list of American
imprints of the first one hundred years of the colonial press is largely
a record in type of the religious activity of the country, and is
impressive as a witness to the obedience of the press to the law of
supply and demand. With the Puritan appetite for a grim religion served
in sermons upon every subject, ornamented and seasoned with supposedly
apt Scriptural quotations, a demand was created for printed discourses
to be read and inwardly digested at home. This demand the printers
supplied. Amid such literary conditions the primer came as light food
for infants' minds, and as such was accepted by parents to impress
religious ideas when teaching the alphabet.
It is not by any means certain that the first edition of this great
primer of our ancestors contained illustrations, as engravers were few
in America before the eighteenth century. Yet it seems altogether
probable that they were introduced early in the next century, as by
seventeen hundred and seventeen Benjamin Harris, Jr.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35