More than 120 million copies of McGuffey Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960,[1] placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster's Dictionary.

[2] William Holmes McGuffey, born September 23, 1800, was the son of Alexander and Anna (Holmes) McGuffey near Claysville in West Finley Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, which is 45 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

[3][4] His family, who had strong opinions about education and religion, immigrated from Scotland to the United States in 1774.

He was "one of an army of half-educated young men who tramped the roads and trails drumming up 'subscription scholars'.

[7] McGuffey left Washington College in 1826 to become a professor of ancient languages at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

[5] In 1836, he left Miami to become president of Cincinnati College, where he also served as a distinguished teacher and lecturer.

While in Cincinnati he began the preparation of an "Eclectic" series of readers and spellers, which became popular, and have been many times revised and reissued.

He later became a minister in Charlottesville and Washington, D.C.[11][12][13][14][c] Harriet was ill during the summer of 1850 and was taken to her parents' home in Woodside by McGuffey.

[15] McGuffey was Henry Ford's favorite author and was always proud of his exposure to McGuffey's teachings, which "reinforced an ordered, rigid, and straightforward view of the world where white was white and black was black".