William Holmes McGuffey -- teacher, preacher, college president, writer, educational reformer, and schoolbook compiler -- is perhaps the most important figure in the history of American public education, yet very few people know much about the man himself. Except for a few letters, a pair of handwritten sermons, and one unpublished manuscript on moral philosophy, his known writings are few. This book makes available some of those scarce writings as it looks at the man and his textbooks. It is estimated that at least 120 million copies of McGuffey's Readers were sold between 1836 and 1920, placing their sales in a class with the Bible and Webster's Dictionary. Indeed, since 1961 they have continued to sell at a rate of some thirty thousand copies a year. - Jacket.