Richard Mulcaster, a schoolmaster, taught in London--first at Merchant Taylors' School, later at St. Paul's. He is remembered today as a teacher of many Elizabethan and Jacobean men of letters and as the author of Positions (1581) and The First Part of the Elementary (1582). In these books he criticizes the prevailing practices in schools and offers his own corrective system, based on a political theory of education generated from his own practice and from certain classical models. Along the way, he has much to say about physical education, the education of young women, reading, writing, spelling, and the English language, all of which radiate outwards from the author's concern to establish a truly public and consistent form of education. Even the style of his writing, Mulcaster assures his reader, self-consciously mirrors his political and theoretical project.

Richard Mulcaster was born in Carlisle, in northern England, in 1531 or 1532. The earliest...