Theory of Teaching.
[Education]. (Peabody, Elizabeth P., publisher). [Lowell, Anna.]. Theory of Teaching. With a few practical illustrations. By a teacher. Boston: E.P. Peabody, 1841.
8vo.; brown cloth; printed spine label; label browned; spine and label nicked. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of this selection of letters between Anna Lowell and her young charge, publisher Elizabeth Peabody’s sister Mary Tyler Peabody Mann. The twenty-one Lowell letters printed here were “part of a real correspondence begun in order to systematize the writer’s own theory and practice.” Mary’s replies, composed with Elizabeth, were first published in 1863 in Moral Culture of Infancy. In her brief unsigned introductory note, Lowell writes, “The position of governess was assumed as the most favorable one for carrying out completely her ideas on education,” and describes the genre into which this volume falls as follows:
In the humbler walks of literature, are many books which supply to those who live in retirement the place of society, by freeing them from prejudice and inducing thought. Such books must be considered as the conversation of those who have attended to a particular subject, and therefore valuable to others who are ignorant of it. It is as one of this class that the present correspondence claims for itself a reading.
A Lowell family copy, signed on the front pastedown, Harriet Lowell.
Theory of Teaching is an important book on American education theory reflecting the influence of Transcendentalism and anticipating the ideas which led to the founding of the first kindergarten in America, by its publisher Elizabeth Peabody, in 1860.
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