American children's literature was an embryonic concept in early America. As an outpost of the British Empire, colonial children principally read works imported from England. In the absence of copyright laws, colonial and early American printers freely borrowed whole titles or parts of books and bowdlerized British works liberally. Authentic American texts written exclusively for child entertainment did not appear until the 1820s. Seventeenth-century classics like John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), and popular advice books such as Lord Halifax's The Lady's Gift, or Advice to a Daughter (1688) or Henry Peacham's Compleat Gentleman (1622) remained popular imports in the eighteenth century. Williamsburg bookshops sold chapbooks (small illustrated stories), advice books, and Anglican prayer books and catechisms to wealthy families. In New England the New England Primer and a variety of Protestant catechisms sold well in the eighteenth century. By the 1780s such children's classics as the Tales of Mother Goose, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella were being printed in Boston by Isaiah Thomas.
English-language children's literature underwent significant redefinition in the works of London printer John Newbery (1713-1767). He closely adhered to the learning theories of John Locke, which stressed the ease with which children could soak up information rationally presented. Newbery reworked familiar folktales into instructive moral lessons like A History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765) or A Little Pretty Pocketbook (1744). Newbery often introduced his books with a short essay directed to parents, admonishing them to use every daily event and life experience as a teaching moment. American printers imported Newbery books, but Hugh Gaine of New York and Isaiah Thomas also produced their own versions of his popular titles, adding maxims or additional stories to known titles at will. Not until 1790 did the U.S. Congress pass a copyright law giving authors the exclusive right to their own work for fourteen years, an act that stimulated American publications.
Regardless of legislation in colonial Massachusetts requiring that schools be established in all towns (1642), schooling and literacy remained sporadic and was the responsibility of parents or masters. The New England Primer, first published about 1690, remained the principle instructional text, whether children memorized it at home or in a school setting. It introduced children to the alphabet through memorized couplets, then presented simple phrases and proverbs, until students could read the Apostle's Creed and a catechism. Some versions of the Primer included a lengthy dialogue among Christ, the Devil, and a young man.
American printers accommodated to the changing political tenor of the New World by changing British references in the Primer. For example, "Our King the good" became "Kings should be good"; after the Revolution, that same line became "The British King / Lost States thirteen." Parents, tutors, and schoolroom teachers all relied on the New England Primer or one of the lesser known dissenting church primers, such as the one written by Quaker activist John Woolman in 1766, which focused on nature themes rather than biblical ones. Two English authors compiled grammar exercises that sold well in America: A New Guide to the English Tongue, by Thomas Dilworth, and English Reader, by Lindley Murray.
With the boycott of British imports during the 1770s and beyond, American booksellers were thrown upon their own devices to supply the classroom and the small market of book buyers. American civic leaders like Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams began to call for increased educational opportunities for children so as to ensure the success of the new Republic. Arguing (in a letter to John Canfield in 1783) that America "must be as independent in literature as she is in politics," Noah Webster produced a set of progressively difficult volumes for reading instruction that emphasized republican virtue, proper behavior, and standardized spelling. The first work in this series, the American Spelling Book (1783), was affectionately dubbed the "blue back speller." It remained a standard in the American classroom for several generations. Webster's The Little Reader's Assistant (1790) included a question and answer section called the "federal catechism" that provided a basic civics lesson. Mason Locke Weems also stressed republican virtues in his Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington (1800), the first account to include the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree.
The first American to produce bona fide children's literature was Samuel Goodrich (1793-1860), who wrote under the pen name Peter Parley. Goodrich began his career as a printer in Boston and published Tales of Peter Parley about America anonymously in 1827. In it the elderly Parley conversed with children on their level, in simple sentences, while relaying tales about Indians or battles of the American Revolution. Later works profiled famous Americans from Captain John Smith to Benjamin Franklin. Goodrich drew a moral tale from every story and, like Noah Webster, replaced dependence on biblical injunctions with a generic civic morality, an approach that lingered in children's literature through the nineteenth century.