Lucille M. Schultz's "The Young Composers: Composition"'"s Beginnings in Nineteenth-Century Schools" is the first full-length history of school-based writing instruction. Schultz demonstrates that writing instruction in nineteenth-century American schools is much more important in the overall history of writing instruction than we have previously assumed.

Drawing on primary materials that have not been considered in previous histories of writing instructionlittle-known textbooks and student writing that includes prize-winning essays, journal entries, letters, and articles written for...

Both a historical recovery and a critical rethinking of the functions and practices of textbooks, "Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States" argues for an alternative understanding of our rhetorical traditions. The authors describe how the pervasive influence of nineteenth-century literacy textbooks demonstrate the early emergence of substantive instruction in reading and writing. Tracing the histories of widespread educational practices, the authors treat the textbooks as an important means of cultural formation that...