of Dr. McGuffey, then at the University of Virginia, and were approved by him.  It does not appear that Dr. Pinneo exercised any personal authority over the readers.  He was employed, for moderate amounts, to prepare revisions which were satisfactory to both publisher and author.  In the revision of 1843, his work was confined to the Third and Fourth readers.  The First and Second readers were remade by Daniel G. Mason, then a teacher in the schools of Cincinnati.  In the revision of 1853 the entire series passed through Dr. Pinneo’s hands.  He probably corrected the proof sheets.  Dr. Pinneo’s latest work on the McGuffey Readers was done in 1856.

After leaving Cincinnati, Dr. Pinneo prepared, and Mr. Smith published, a series of grammars—­the Analytical, issued in 1850, and the Primary, in 1854.  He was also the author of a High School Reader and of Hemans’s Young Ladies’ Readers.  These books had for some years a considerable sale.

[Obed J. Wilson]

As early as 1853 Mr. Obed J. Wilson was in the office of Mr. Smith as an employee.  Mr. Wilson was born in Bingham, Maine, in 1826, and earned his first money as an axman in the pine forests which were in that day near his native town.  He obtained, in the common schools, sufficient education to become a teacher and he never ceased to be a student, thus acquiring a broad acquaintance with English literature.  He taught in the schools of Cincinnati when he first went West.  There his abilities soon attracted the attention of Mr. Smith, who employed him.  For some years he traveled as an agent, chiefly in Indiana and Wisconsin, introducing the books of the Eclectic Series.  He gradually became Mr. Smith’s trusted assistant, particularly in the direction of the work of agents and in the selection of new books, and their adaptation to the demands of the field.  He married Miss Amanda Landrum, who was also a skilled teacher in the Cincinnati schools.  Mrs. Wilson was responsible for a revision of the McGuffey First Reader made in 1863.  She also at that time corrected the plates of the higher numbers of the series.  For many years thereafter Mr. Wilson was the chief authority for Mr. Smith and his successors in literary matters, and few men excelled him in breadth of reading and in discriminating taste.

Mr. Wilson lives in his home near Cincinnati which is filled with the choice books which he has read and studied so faithfully, and he still has the companionship of the wife who has been his constant helpmate for more than half a century.

Mr. Winthrop B. Smith was the sole proprietor of the McGuffey Readers and his other publications from 1841 until about 1852.  He then admitted as partners, Edward Sargent and Daniel Bartow Sargent, his wife’s brothers, and the firm name became W.B.  Smith & Co.

[Eastern Publishers]