Woolley, G.W.:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

WOOLLEY'S CARSTAIRIAN PENMANSHIP: CONTAINING AN EXPLANATION OF THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF THE ART, WITH 200 EXERCISES AND COPIES. A 19th-century American penmanship manual, promoting the Carstairian system, by G.W. Woolley of Philadelphia, featuring twenty-eight color plates for copying. The twenty-eight plates, from wood engravings, feature white script on a variety of colored backgrounds.The Carstairian system was part of what has been described as "a new, more conservative, approach to the teaching of handwriting" that began to emerge about the turn of the 19th century, one that sought "to exert greater control over the body and mind of the writer" (Clayton). Joseph Carstairs (1783–1844) was a writing instructor in London's West End. Originally a tailor from Sunderland, he learned penmanship from James Mowat in Edinburgh. Carstairs was one of those instructors who "advocated a new writing action, which includes movements from the shoulder and not only the hand" (Clayton). Such movement was "only possible by making the trunk of the body rigid and the writing hand relatively immobile, even as the arm moves the hand and pen about the surface. To encourage this stability," Carstairs and his disciples "advocated the use of bindings, elaborate ribbons that tied the hand in the correct position on to the pen; writers might also be tied to their chairs to ensure correct posture" (Clayton). While the Carstairian system "eventually faded out in Britain…it went on to have a considerable

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