Background.

Caleb Bingham was born in 1757 in Salisbury, Connecticut. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1782, delivering the Latin valedictory address to his classmates. Following graduation he took charge of Moor's Indian Charity School, which prepared Indians to study at Dartmouth. By 1784 he was in Boston, where he opened a private school to teach young women "the useful branches of reading, writing, etc." Bingham would spend the rest of his life in Boston, teaching school, writing textbooks, and running his own publishing house, becoming one of the most successful and influential textbook writers in American history.

Books.

Bingham's first book, The Young Lady's Accidence: or A Short and Easy Introduction to the English Grammar (1785), was short, concise, and clear. He followed this volume with The American Preceptor (1794), a collection of speeches, excerpts from plays, and poetry designed for the teaching of both reading and...