The story of A
Subtitle: the alphabetization of America from The New England primer to The scarlet letter
By: Patricia Crain.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 315
Subjects: Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864; New England primer; English language -- Alphabet -- Study and teaching -- United States; Alphabetizing -- United States -- History; Literacy -- United States -- History; Language arts -- United States; United States -- Civilization
Description: "Illustrated with often antic images from alphabet books and primers, The Story of A relates the history of the alphabet as a genre of text for children and of alphabetization as a social practice in America, from early modern reading primers to the literature of the American Renaissance.".

"Offering a poetics of alphabetization and explicating the alphabet's tropes and rhetorical strategies, the author demonstrates the far-reaching cultural power of such apparently neutral statements as "A is for apple." The new market for children's books in the eighteenth century established for the "republic of ABC" a cultural potency equivalent to its high-culture counterpart, the "republic of letters," while shaping its child-readers into consumers.

As a central rite of socialization, alphabetization schooled children to conflicting expectations, as well as to changing models of authority, understandings of the world, and uses of literature."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 273-300) and index.
Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University.