Jacob Abbott

Jacob Abbott (1803–1879) was an American Congregationalist minister, educator and a prolific author of books for children. Born in Hallowell, Maine, he taught at Amherst College and founded the Mount Vernon School for girls in Boston, and his book The Teacher (1833) set out his ideas on education by persuasion rather than fear. He wrote some two hundred books, among them the twenty-eight Rollo books, the Franconia stories and the Makers of History, short biographies of figures such as Hannibal, Xerxes, Romulus, Richard I and Margaret of Anjou. He was the father of the clergyman Lyman Abbott.