Most people have at least heard of McGuffey's Readers even if they have never seen one. That is because they are schoolbooks that were published from 1836 to the 1920's. Now that's staying power. In that time, the readers were revised three times; that in itself would be unheard of today, when school textbooks have to be revised every 2 or 3 years so the publishers can sell more books.
The first revision was in 1856 and the second in 1879, long after W. H. McGuffey's death. Nothing from the earlier versions was retained. That 1879 edition was published virtually unchanged into the 1920's. But it means that the most popular edition has absolutely nothing in common with the original edition aside from its name. I know that a lot of people who want or sell editions of McGuffey have no idea that there are different editions. I have asked on eBay more than once which edition a seller had, and they would say "the revised." Hmph.
I now own all three revisions of McGuffey's Fourth Reader. I have a number of fourth readers from different publishers in order to extablish baseline comparisons against publishers and time periods, and I wanted to compare the different editions as well. You can find reprints of the 1836 edition published by Mott Media, and reprints of the 1879-1920 version are available from Amazon. I was going through and comparing them for content, style, and tone when I noticed this little caveat in the Mott version:
Slight changes have taken place for the sake of clarification. Those changes are as follows: a. some punctuation has been changed to keep it consistent wth current usage; b. many words which used to be hyphenated are now shown as one word; c. the following lesson has been omitted because it was not appropriate today: XVII, and the last half of paragraph 11 in lesson VII.
The changes in punctauation and hyphenation I can see, no problem. But you know I had to know what they meant by "not appropriate today." I don't have an original copy of the 1836 edition, so I haven't been able to find out what lesson XVIII was, but lesson VII is in the 1856 edition that I have. So, in the interest of information and education, I will share with you the part deemed "not appropriate today" by Mott Media.
From "The Whale Ship" (Regular font indicates what was left in. Italics is what was omitted.)
On the 27th of December, the three boats, with the remainder of the men, started in company from the island, for Juan Fernandez, a distance of two thousand five hundred miles! On the 12th of January, the boats parted company in a gale. Then commenced a scene of suffering, which cannot be contemplated without horror. The men died, one after another, and the survivors lived upon their flesh. In the captain's boat, on the first of February, three only were living; they cast lots to see which of them should die. It fell upon the youngest, a nephew of the captain. He seated himself in the bow of the boat, with calmness and fortitude -- was shot and eaten!
Shot and eaten! How did the captain explain that to his sister or brother? "Oh, yeah, well, he was the youngest and tasti -- I mean we were starving, weren't we!"
Ok, so it's a bit gory and gruesome, but I think most kids today would just find it amusing. I know I did. Now if I can find out what lesson XVIII was...
Posted by Alexandra at March 13, 2006 07:49 AM