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Before the American Revolution most schoolbooks used in New England were printed in England. Most American school books of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were printed in a major American city on the northeast coast which were the first to have printing houses with expensive printing presses (cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia). These printing houses provided a wide array of services often printing newspapers, books, broadsides, and advertisements. Many printing houses also were bookstores selling the books printed by other "presses".
Larger in-land towns in New England began to have their own printing presses and newspapers in the 1790's. (1797 happens to be the year Greenfield, Massachusetts got its first press and newspaper) By the early 1800's many smaller villages also had printing houses; John Wilson opened his printing house in Deerfield in 1814. These smaller presses came to print many schoolbook titles-some of them plagiarized from their big-city competitors.
Schoolbooks were profitable for printers in New England and New York as the Northeast took the lead in the public education movements of the early Republic and there was a big demand for schoolbooks there.
Schoolbooks were not provided by the schools in the 19th century. Parents had to purchase books for their children from a list of books approved by their local District School Committee. Books were expensive, so they were often passed down in the family from one child to the next, and sometimes even one generation to the next generation. Printers often advertised schoolbooks in their newspapers before each school session.
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