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The New England Primer

1690-1850s. Publishers: various. See history page for more details.

America's First Rhyming Alphabet

This alphabet in verse and pictures started more than 300 years ago! The little text book it was in (called a "primer" in those days) was so popular that it was printed many, many times and used for more than 160 years. The primers were very small books, about 3" x 5"--bigger than a child's hand but smaller then an adult's. Most all of our country's founding fathers learned their their alphabet from these verses in The New England Primer!

You may notice a couple of missing letters: 'i' and 'v'. This is because the very old Latin alphabet only had 24 letters (we use 26).  Even after people invented the difference between 'i' and 'j' and between 'u' and 'v', alphabet lists sometimes only showed 24 letters. In this Primer, these 24 letters with pictures and verses were usually printed on 4 pages, grouped just like you find them here.

When different people printed this primer, they sometimes changed and updated the verses. Like after 1776 when The United States became independent from England, George Washington could be used for 'W'. Some of these different verses can be seen below. And the pictures were always different--so have fun looking at the different artwork.