The American School Library


The American School Library was a set of books published by Harper & Brothers in 1838 and 1839 on behalf of the American Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The Society was incorporated in the State of New York on May 16, 1837 at the urging of the Reverend Gorham D. Abbott. The American Society, and its Library, were inspired by "A Library of Useful Knowledge", a set of educational pamphlets published in England in the late 1820s by the UK's Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The fifty books in the set included volumes on American, Egyptian and Chinese history, biographies of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte, the principles of physiology and health, and the novel The Swiss Family Robinson. The set of 50 books was priced twenty dollars, with the cost of providing a set to the nation's fifty thousand school districts set at one million dollars.
In 1839, New York State passed a law mandating that every school district in the state would buy a set of American School Library volumes. However, while the Superintendent of Schools agreed to purchase the books from the publisher, he did not acknowledge the Society's role in its distribution, and no remuneration was offered directly to the Society. The Society, which had spent more than $10,000 and only raised $3,000, was looking forward to the New York purchases to cover its debts. Left with no resources, the Society suspended operations.
The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History holds the only complete original set of this series complete with its wooden carrying case.

Goals

The Society's aim was to create a National School Library, to be placed in the nation's fifty thousand schools. "For this purpose," the Connecticut Common School Journal printed, "the Society proposed, from the outset, the publication of a series of popular works, upon all those branches of knowledge, most interesting and useful to the great body of the people;— including History, Voyages and Travels, Biography, Natural History, the Physical, Intellectual, Moral and Political Sciences, Agriculture, Manufactures, Arts, Commerce, Belles Lettres, the History and Philosophy of Education, and the Evidences of Christianity. It aims thus to bring before the minds of the entire population of the country, the richest means of social, intellectual, and moral improvement; and in the view of the Committee, there are few ways in which more extensive, substantial and lasting good can be conferred upon our country."

Contributors

Contributors to the Library included John Abercrombie, Sir John Barrow, Andrew Combe, Andrew Crichton, John Francis Davis, Thomas Dick, William Dunlap, Leonhard Euler, Francis L. Hawks, William Mullinger Higgins, Barbara Hofland, Mary Hughs, George Payne Rainsford James, Anna Jameson, Robert Jameson, John Gibson Lockhart, Hugh Murray, James Montgomery, James Kirke Paulding, Eliza Robbins, Michael Russell, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Benjamin Bussey Thatcher, John Williams, James Wilson and Johann David Wyss.

Contents

The fifty Library volumes included:

History