Click the images for larger view.
The Hornbook
A typical hornbook text measuring about 3 1/2" x 2 1/2."
The hornbook, a form of ABC book, was common by Shakespeare's day (Love's Labour's Lost, Act V. i.). It consisted of a piece parchment or paper pasted onto (most commonly) a wooden board and protected by a leaf of horn. The text usually started with a cross in the top left-hand corner, followed by an alphabet, vowels, a syllabary, and the invocation to the Trinity, after which the Lord's prayer was printed. The horn-book was often known as the "Crisscross-row" or "Crisscross," which is probably a reference to the Christ's cross at the top of it, or perhaps the way in which the text itself is set up to be read. At any rate the text of the hornbook shows clearly how much religion dominated instruction and literacy in these early times. The compact text did not allow room for illustration. However, on the other side might be engraved some splendid figure, such as St. George, or the reigning monarch, or even a mermaid. According to Mahoney, in the invention of the hornbook, "provision was made, for the first time, for children to handle their own books" (p.8).
.
A Scottish hornbook (1784) of paper and horn
Sometimes hornbooks were
made of other materials such as leather, ivory, or even silver (and their
combinations). This late eighteenth-century hornbook is said to have been used
to teach the children of the Duke of Marlborough
A silver hornbook
(ca.1550) with a bird engraved on the back, showing that some aesthetic pleasure
was allowed for.
The hornbook often had a hole in its handle for suspension. These pictures, from Tuer's History of the Hornbook, show us the typical social contexts in which hornbooks were used, which was not always a scene of instruction in either the "dame" school or the classroom, but often in play.
A picture of the "chapman," who sold hornbooks and chapbooks. From a drawing first published in Rome in 1646.
