Morag Styles of the University of Cambridge and Evelyn Arizpe of the University of Glasgow summarise their historical research on literacy in Jane Johnson's nursery library.

A well-to-do vicar's wife, Jane Johnson (1708-1759) led a conventional upper-middle-class life, but the educational materials she produced for her children offer unique insights into domestic literacy and the teaching of reading in the eighteenth century. Jane's materials are educationally and historically interesting in their own right, but also contribute to current debates on methods of literacy.

Our study looks at her literacy practices and teaching methods in detail, placing them in the context of eighteenth century family life. We demonstrate how opportunities for storytelling, references to everyday life, attractive presentation, as well as exercises based on phonics or whole-word recognition, were part of Jane's reading lessons. She understood that to make reading meaningful, then as now, children need more than exercises to make the texts their own. She also realised the appeal of multimodal texts; most of the 438 pieces in her nursery library include well-designed, attractive pictures and borders.

Morag Styles, with other scholars, began research in the 1990s. They tracked down Jane Johnson's descendants; letters to her children; her commonplace book, poems, art works and a wide range of reading materials; and, most interesting of all, a story (A Very Pretty Story) written for her children in 1744, now published by the Bodleian Library.

The study expanded in 2002 in collaboration with Evelyn Arizpe, to research:

• the religious, philosophical and literary influences on Jane Johnson's own reading and on her pedagogic methods
• comparisons with other children's literature in the first half of the eighteenth century
• links to early reading primers
• the significance of visual material in pedagogies of teaching reading and in children's reading matter
• the relationship to current debates about the teaching and learning of literacy.

We know that Jane Johnson was not the only mother who was closely involved in her children's early education. Diaries and letters from as early as the seventeenth century reveal parental interest in their children's learning. However, our study found that Jane Johnson was unique in that she based her teaching methods on influential educational philosophies of the time, such as the work of John Locke, François Fénelon and Charles Rollin. She was also familiar with popular primers, such as those published by John Newbery, and composed some of her texts along the lines of his intention to both instruct and amuse.

Furthermore, our study found that Jane Johnson's nursery library reflects an original approach to teaching literacy, which is based on her position as an observant, loving and creative mother. As such, she was able to incorporate her children's experiences into the lesson cards (as well as into the moral tale she composed for them) by using their names and referring to everyday scenes and familiar objects. She creates situations, through both text and image, which encourage language practice through conversation and storytelling. Above all, surrounding the moral and didactic messages, on one hand, and the pedagogy of teaching reading on the other, lies the ability to make the materials particularly appealing for children, through an eye for design and a sense of humour. As she writes to the Headmaster of Uppingham school in 1758:

"I am not ignorant of what it is to teach Children having taught all my own and several others to read without any assistance and always took pleasure in it … their sweet innocent looks and sprightly actions more than compensate for that trouble and the satisfaction of seeing their daily improvements is beyond all other pleasures."

Jane Johnson's materials offer insight into the family's literacy practices and how they may have contributed to changing teaching methods, children's literature and the wider culture of childhood in the eighteenth century. Documents covering three generations allow us to follow the ways in which children were allowed to emerge as individuals, and how the teaching methods, instructional texts and educational toys were geared towards their development. Our research shows that the Johnson children learned their lessons well, growing up to be highly literate and cultured adults who were passionate readers and writers.

References

E. Arizpe and M. Styles (2004) 'Love to learn your book': children's experiences of text in the eighteenth century, History of Education, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 337-352.
M. Hilton, M. Styles and V. Watson (eds.) (1997) Opening the Nursery Door: Reading, Writing and Childhood: 1600-1900, London: Routledge.
J. Johnson (2001) A very pretty story by Jane Johnson: a facsimile of a manuscript held by the Bodleian Library, Oxford: Bodleian Library.
M. Styles and E. Arizpe (2004) Reading lessons from the eighteenth century, Children's Literature in Education, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 53-68.

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