The Jones Fifth Reader

After restoration to excellent condition, this textbook will allow future teachers and young scholars to go back in time to touch, smell and experience educational history. It will be useful for School of Education assignments comparing and contrasting textbooks published in various decades. With lofty goals for The Jones Fifth Reader, L. H. Jones set out “to rouse and sustain…noble ambitions, to make the right in human action seem reasonable and desirable, to give that general intelligence which underlies helpful social cooperation and, above all, to permeate this growing intelligence with a pure and deep love for our country and its institutions” in the student population. The text presents selections from the top English literature of its time ranging from Cervantes’ Don Quixote to The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe.   

Condition and treatment: This is an early 20^th century textbook written for a 6 - 8^th grade audience. The cloth covered publisher's binding is decorated in architectural ornamentation printed in red and blue. The cover's spine and edges are heavily worn with areas of loss. Conservation staff will treat the binding to consolidate the edges of the covers and fill losses in the spine. The binding will be wrapped in a protective jacket to prevent future wear and will be stored in an archival corrugated clamshell enclosure.