Censored schoolbook

Lindley Murray (1745–1826).
Sequel to the English Reader.
New York: John S. Taylor, 1839. (BRB0148)

Lindley Murray’s English Reader was an immensely successful textbook in nineteenth-century grammar schools in the United States. In this copy of the author’s Sequel to the English Reader, first published in 1801, an entire reading by the Scottish historian William Robertson (1721–1793) entitled the “Character of Martin Luther” was deleted by means of stamping with heavily inked blocks. In a public lecture at St. James Church in New York City on 27 July 1840, Rev. John Hughes (1797–1864), Bishop of New York, denounced the inclusion of this passage in books used in the city’s schools. He argued that such Lutheran propaganda was symptomatic of the sectarian education in public schools that would make children in the Catholic minority “subject to the ridicule of their companions, and . . . ashamed of their religion.”