EDITORS: Photo available on request.

ANN ARBOR—A primer from which to learn her ABCs and a writing slate to practice her “pen” and mark out her lessons would not be adequate to complete a girl’s education in past centuries. Lessons in how to become a lady were necessary to round out a girl’s education and those lessons were distributed through printed material containing moral advice and behavioral parables.

Such lessons were designed primarily for use in the home so parents of the native-born, upper-class white girl could present their daughters to society as a “lady.”

Among the juvenile literature section of the University of Michigan’s Clements Library, curatorial assistant Carolyn Hart uncovered numerous books, primers, and periodicals printed over the last few centuries for young people. “This collection yields much fruitful information regarding the education, play, and socialization of girls throughout the 18th and 19th centuries,” Hart says.

One slight, 3-inch high book from the 1820s, “Giddy Gertrude: A Story for Little Girls,” warned young ladies, in stanzas of rhyme, against becoming like Gertrude—a careless child who soiled her clothes, and whose sewing stitches were too long.

“The Good Little Girl’s Book” of 1849 further illustrates the difference between right and wrong through sketches of the different “types” of girls in the world: good-natured vs. thoughtless, orderly vs. slovenly.

“Most interesting for the historian,” says Hart, “are the opportunities to compare directly the gendered messages aimed separately at boys and girls in earlier eras.”

A copy of “The American Girl’s Book, or Occupation for Play Hours” (1849) provides a look into the play time of little girls at mid-century. Inscribed in what Hart calls a strong hand, to “Emily Rebecca Osgood Peirce, from her Papa,” the book lists all the sports appropriate for young girls of 7 or 8 years of age: “Hide and Seek,” playing “Sewing School,” and “Blindman’s Bluff.” Additional pastimes included in the book are riddles to be solved and 17 different patterns for making pincushions.

In contrast, the 1851 “Boy’s Book of Sports and Games” lists very different activities including “Regiment of Soldiers,” “Foot-Ball” and “Rounders,” plus archery, swimming, cricket, “angling,” rowing, and riding.

“The gendered messages of previous centuries are still with us today in many ways,” Hart says, “and these materials tell us much about how notions of child-rearing that are falling away in our own time were enforced in the not-too-distant past.”

Clements Library