author
William Holmes McGuffey
1800–1873
Best known for the enormously influential McGuffey Readers, he helped shape how generations of American children learned to read. His schoolbooks blended reading instruction with moral lessons and became some of the most widely used textbooks of the 19th century.
8 Audiobooks
The New McGuffey First Reader
by William Holmes McGuffey
McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition
by William Holmes McGuffey
McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader
by William Holmes McGuffey
McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader
by William Holmes McGuffey
McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader
by William Holmes McGuffey
McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader
by William Holmes McGuffey
McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader
by William Holmes McGuffey
McGuffey's Eclectic Primer, Revised Edition
by William Holmes McGuffey
About the author
Born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1800, William Holmes McGuffey grew up with little formal schooling but became a teacher while still very young. He went on to build a career as an educator, professor, and college president, earning a lasting place in American educational history.
McGuffey is remembered above all for compiling the McGuffey Readers, a series of elementary reading textbooks first published in the 1830s. The books were used across the United States for decades and sold in astonishing numbers, helping standardize reading instruction while also reflecting the moral and religious values that many 19th-century readers expected from schoolbooks.
Over the course of his life, he taught and held leadership roles at several colleges, including Miami University and the University of Virginia. He died in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1873, but his name remains closely tied to the rise of popular mass education in the United States.