Hornbook

For the magazine about children's literature, see The Horn Book Magazine.
Miss Campion holding a hornbook, 1661. From Tuer's History of the Horn-Book.

A hornbook (horn-book) is a single-sided alphabet tablet, which served from medieval times as a primer for study,[1] and sometimes included vowel combinations, numerals or short verse.[2] The hornbook was in common use in England around 1450,[3] but may have originated more than a century earlier.[4] The term (hornbook) has been applied to different study materials in different fields but owes its origin to children's education, represented by a sheet of vellum or paper displaying the alphabet, religious verse, etc., protected with a translucent covering of horn (or mica) and attached to a frame provided with a handle.[5]

  1. ^ Tuer, Andrew W. (1897). History of the Horn-Book. London: The Leadenhall Press. pp. 1–486. ISBN 9780405090356.
  2. ^ Pinto, Edward H (1969). TREEN and other wooden bygones - An Encyclopaedia and Social History. London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd. p. 416. ISBN 9780713515336.
  3. ^ Huey, Edmund B. (1908). The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. New York: The MacMillan Company. p. 244.
  4. ^ Plimpton, George A. "The Hornbook and Its Use in America". Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 26 (1916): 264-72.
  5. ^ Definition of hornbook from dictionary.com