Webster's Elementary Spelling Book
The alphabet, syllables, then word lists from short words to long ones, with reading lessons and short fables along the way.
Scanned from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill copy.
Homeschool · English
Spelling and Grammar
Two classic 1800s English books: Noah Webster's famous “blue-backed speller” and Thomas Harvey's grammar and composition course. Free to read here or download, with a step-by-step teaching guide for every lesson.
Start here
Webster's speller teaches reading and spelling by sound, starting with the alphabet and syllables like ba, be, bi, bo, bu, then words of one, two and more syllables. Many families use it alongside a reader such as McGuffey's.
Harvey's Elementary Grammar is for children who already read well, about ages 9 to 12. Each short lesson explains one idea, such as nouns, verbs or sentences, and ends with exercises, including writing sentences and short compositions.
About the books
Noah Webster (1758–1843), best known for his dictionary, first published his speller in 1783. Later revised and renamed The Elementary Spelling Book, it was used in American schools for more than a century, and its blue cover gave it the nickname “the blue-backed speller.” It also helped set American spellings such as color and center.
Thomas W. Harvey (1821–1892) was an Ohio teacher and school leader. His grammars came from the same Cincinnati publishers as McGuffey's Readers and Ray's Arithmetic, and were used widely in the late 1800s. The Elementary Grammar and Composition (1880) is the first of his two books, and the gentler one.
The books
Harvey's Elementary Grammar and Composition
Short lessons on the parts of speech, sentences and punctuation, each with exercises, and practice in writing letters and compositions.
Scanned from a Library of Congress copy.
About these copies
For the McGuffey speller, see McGuffey's Readers.
Every book here was published in the United States before 1930, so it is in the public domain there: free to read, print and share. The scans are kept by the Internet Archive, which shows them on this page and supplies the PDF downloads. The teaching guides are written for this site. Modern reprints are also sold, if you prefer a clean printed copy.