An Appeal to the Public, Especially Those Concerned in Education, Against the Wrong and Injury Done by Marcius Willson, in His Pamphlet Entitled "Report on American Histories, Etc. Published by Mark H. Newman & Co. New York, 1847." Showing Also Their Trespasses on My Literary Property

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Small 8vo (7.625" x 4.625"), original printed gray wrappers. 36, [12] pp. Early ownership inscription in ink on upper wrapper: "J. Howard June 1847." CONDITION: Very good, dampstain to upper wrapper, 1.75" split to wrapper at foot of spine. Emma Willard's rebuttal of rival text book author Marcius Willson in a debate that articulated core questions of historiography and text-book compilation at the height of the common school era. This counter-thrust, an entry in the two-year pamphlet battle between pioneering female educator and mapmaker Emma Willard and her young rival Marcius Willson, opens with Willard's "Questions, for those who wish to be just" and states her intention "without fear, [to] let the truth be known"-that is, that Willson's book, which he promotes in part through his denigration of Willard's Abridged History of the United States, is in fact "an imitation of that work." In 1845, shortly before publishing his own History of the United States for the Use of Schools, Marcius Willson had published what he claimed to be an impartial criticism of eight historical textbooks, including Willard's. But, as Willard wrote in her first (anonymous) response, Willson, "being about to publish [a textbook] himself, very naturally seeks to destroy public confidence in his rivals." Willard was particularly nettled that Willson's History even looked like hers-so much that "booksellers.have come to me, and asked me if I was aware that a book was in the market, which appeared like a counterfeit of mine,-so resembling it, that it would naturally be taken by common observers for the same." She was the only author to respond to Willson's initial criticism, and their ensuing debate reflected the increasingly commercialized textbook market towards the end of the common school era and articulates clashing philosophies over "how to 'compile' a history textbook" and what such pedagogical works should attempt to accomplish. REFERENCES: Knupfer, Peter B. "How to Write a History Textbook: The Willard Willson Debate over History Education in the Common School Era," History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 59 No. 2 (2019). N° de ref. del artículo 7979

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