Handwriting in America: A Cultural History

By Tamara Plakins Thornton

Book Overview

Copybooks and the Palmer method, handwriting analysis and autograph collecting-these words conjure up a lost world, in which people looked to handwriting as both a lesson in conformity and a talisman... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300064772
• ISBN13: 9780300064773
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Handwriting in America: A Cultural History

An interesting book, but it should have been titled "The Teaching of Handwriting in America". Also, it missed a kind of writing which I can't name, but know when I see it - for example, something like "California" on California auto license tags. It was taught in America, and it was the model in England for many years - a Life magazine article around 1950 showed such examples from the winners in an English schoolboy competition. (My father learned this style in a preparatory school in the South in the early 1900s, and one of our daughters-in-law was taught the same way.) One reviewer adversely criticized this book for harping on, perhaps even imagining, sexism in the early teaching of handwriting, and I don't think the comment was deserved - I believe the author was accurately describing what was actually taught, and gave it no more space than is warranted.