William Holmes McGuffey

William Holmes McGuffey (1800–1873) was an American educator and the compiler of the Eclectic Readers, the schoolbooks on which several generations of Americans learned to read. Born in Pennsylvania and raised on the Ohio frontier, he taught in country schools from the age of fourteen, graduated from Washington College and became professor of languages at Miami University in Ohio, where he prepared the first four Readers in 1836 and 1837. He later served as president of Cincinnati College and Ohio University and, from 1845 until his death, as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia. The Readers sold some 120 million copies.