hornbook

Image: ImagineRITCaryGraphicArtsCollectionHornbook.jpg]]Horn books, battledore books and crisscross books were all tablets designed primarily to teach the alphabet to children{{cite book |last1=Folmsbee |first1=Beula |title=Little History of the Horn-Book|date=1942 |publisher=Horn Book, Incorporated|location=Boston, Massachusetts |isbn=9780876750858|pages=1–57}} laid out as an abecedarium, the elementary method of teaching used from Antiquity to the Middle Ages where letters of the alphabet were taught by rote.{{cite journal |last1=Bailey |first1=Merridee L. |title=Hornbooks |journal=Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth |date=2013 |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=5–14 |doi=10.1353/hcy.2013.0000 |ref=ISSN: 1939-6724}} An illustration of a hornbook from 1326 appears in a richly illuminated vellum manuscript (Liber de Officiis Regum, by Walter de Wilemete) but the earliest recorded reference (to a "boke of horn") is in 1450.Tuer A.W, Op. Cit., p 453 Wooden hornbook primers were in common use by children from the mid-15th century to late 18th century, evolving in to battledore books (mid-18th to mid-19th century), crisscross books, finally displaced by cardboard ABC books in the 19th century.

Hornbooks consist of a lesson sheet illustrating the letters of the alphabet, mounted on a paddle of wood, bone, leather, silver, lead alloy{{cite journal |last1=Lewis |first1=Michael |title=Report of the Portable Antiquities Scheme 2009 |journal=Post-Medieval Archaeology |date=2011 |volume=45 |issue=2 |pages=325–336|doi=10.1179/174581311X13135030529476 |s2cid=163954347 }} or stone and protected by a thin sheet of translucent horn,{{refn| Opaque horn was worked to make it translucent|group= n}} or mica,{{refn|Historically, writers referred to mica as "talc". The sheet mica used in hornbooks are likely to be Muscovite, or Muscovy-glass, a name given to the mineral in Elizabethan England due to its use in medieval Russia (Muscovy) as a cheaper alternative to glass in windows|group= n}} held in place by narrow brass strips (latten) tacked through the horn to the paddle to protect the lesson sheet.Folmsbee, B. Op. Cit., pp 5-14 The paddle often had a handle with a hole for a cord or ribbon suspended from the child's girdle at their waist. The lesson sheet, which was first of vellum and later of paper, were typically inscribed with a large cross,{{refn| from which the hornbook was called the Christ Cross Row, or criss-cross row.{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Horn-book|volume=13|page=708|short=y}}|group=n}} followed by alphabet letters,{{refn| early hornbooks lack the letters "J" and "U"{{cite journal |last1=Burnett |first1=Laura |last2=Webley |first2=Robert |title=Report of the Portable Antiquities Scheme 2018|journal=Post-Medieval Archaeology |date=2020 |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=229–236|doi=10.1080/00794236.2020.1812301 |s2cid=224913823 }}|group=n}} numbers and in later version, short verse.{{cite journal |last1=Patterson |first1=Annette, Joyce |last2=Cormack |first2=Philip, Anton |last3=Green |first3=Philip, Charles |title=The child, the text and the teacher: reading primers and reading instruction |journal=Paedagogica Historica |date=2012 |volume=48 |issue=2 |pages=185–196|doi=10.1080/00309230.2011.644302 |s2cid=142772041 |url=https://eprints.qut.edu.au/48007/1/Primers_final_anonymised_Reviewed3.pdf }} Hornbooks displayed letters of the alphabet, a syllabary and prayers for novice readers. Andrew Tuer described a typical hornbook with a line separating the lower case and capital letters from the syllabary. This syllabarium or syllabary, likely added to the hornbook in 1596, taught pronunciations of vowel and consonant combinations.Bailey M.L, Op. Cit., p 10

:ab eb ib ob ub ba be bi bo bu

These syllables are possible ancestors to the modern instructional practice of new readers working with onsets and rimes in word families. From the first hornbook, the alphabet format cemented the learning progression from syllables to words. The inscriptions appear either in block print (illustrated upper left), best suited for learning to read or hand-written (illustrated lower right), best suited for learning to write.Tuer A.W, Op. Cit., p 11

Image: Horn book front (hires).jpg oak Hornbook]]The memory of "hornbooks" in modern culture has faded partly because of the extreme scarcity of original exemplars as they fell out of use.{{refn| When technological advances displace utility objects, their value in advancing that technology is often lost as better and more desirable utilities replaced them. Even as early as 1651, some educationalists scorned the use of hornbooks (Bailey, 2013, p11), so it is not surprising that few contemporaries recognise the value of incipient posterity|group= n}} Hornbooks were educational tools for children, but children had other uses for hornbooks, which contributed further to their dearth.Bailey, M.L. Op. Cit., pp12-134Folmsbee, B. Op. Cit., p 4 By the time that antiquarians had realised their lack in the 19th century, it was too late; most had been destroyed.Tuer A.W, Op. Cit., p 7 Those few authentic hornbooks in existence today are preserved either because of their intrinsic value (their owners were rich and famous e.g. Queen Elizabeth I), or because they were mislaid by their owners, lost beneath floor-boards, behind panelling, lodged in thatched rafters, or more recently buried, in various states of preservation. The rarity of hornbooks increased their value in the 19th century, which when combined with gaps in knowledge, opened the doors to counterfeit.Tuer, A.W. Op. Cit., pp 178-190{{cite book |last1=Pinto |first1=Edward H |title=TREEN or Small Woodware throughout the Ages|date=1949 |publisher= B.T. Batsford|location=London |isbn=|pages=50–51}} Even the name itself (hornbook) has been appropriated, becoming synonymous with child education (e.g. The Horn Book Magazine), as a benchmark for essential education (e.g. Hornbook (law)), or used as a pejorative term (e.g. poorly educated). Today, there are certainly many more "spurious" hornbooks in circulation than genuine but, in the absence of verified exemplars, skilled counterfeit can be hard to discount.

Images of hornbooks are variously preserved in the margins of old manuscripts,Tuer, A.W. Op. Cit., p453 as a prop in portraiture (illustrated above) or referred to in verse:

• The hornbook is mentioned in William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost (written in the mid-1590s), act 5, scene 1, where Moth refers to the ba, the a, e, i, o, u, and the horn:

:ARMADO. [To HOLOFERNES] Monsieur, are you not lett'red?

:MOTH. Yes, he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward with the horn on his head?

:HOLOFERNES. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

:MOTH. Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

:HOLOFERNES. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

:MOTH. The third of the five vowels, if You repeat them; or the fifth, if I.

:HOLOFERNES. I will repeat them: a, e, i—

:MOTH. The sheep; the other two concludes it: o, u.

• Ben Jonson also describes it in his play Volpone (1605–06), act 4, scene 2:

:CORVINO: ... And yet I hope that I may say, these eyes
Have seen her glued unto that piece of cedar,
That fine well-timber'd gallant; and that here
The letters may be read, through the horn,
That make the story perfect.

• Attributed to William Hornby, an English poet in 1622

{{poemquote|Even so the Hornbooke is the seede and graine

Of skill, by which we learning first obtained :

And though it be accounted small of many,

And haply bought for twopence or a penny.

Yet will the teaching somewhat costly be

Ere they attain unto the full degree

Of scholarship and art.| }}

• Robert Burns, in his poem Death and Doctor Hornbook (1785), refers to a local schoolmaster with a sideline as an apothecary, as Doctor Hornbook.{{cite web|website=Burns Country|url=http://www.robertburns.org/works/60.shtml|title=Complete Works: Death and Doctor Hornbook: A True Story|date=1785|access-date=2017-02-25|archive-date=2023-09-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230924204335/https://www.robertburns.org/works/60.shtml|url-status=dead}}

{{main|Hornbook (law)}}

In United States law, a hornbook is a text that gives an overview of a particular area of law. A law hornbook is a type of treatise, usually one volume, which could be a briefer version of a longer, multi-volume treatise. Students in American law schools often use hornbooks as supplements to casebooks.

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{{commons|Hornbook}}

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{{Wikiquote}}

• [http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/juvenile.00160 Wood Hornbook] from the [https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/ Rare Book and Special Collections Division] at the Library of Congress
• [http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/general.00155 Ivory Hornbook] from the [https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/ Rare Book and Special Collections Division] at the Library of Congress
• Hornbook search [https://finds.org.uk/database/search/results/q/Hornbook] from the Portable Antiquities Scheme voluntary programme

Category:Pedagogical publications

Category:Alphabet books

Category:Wood products

Category:Teaching

Category:Learning to read

Category:Basal readers