Elementary Literacy on the Eve of the Industrial Revolution: Trends in Rural New England, 1760-1830.

Despite our own biases on the subject of literacy, in premodern America illiteracy incapacitated no one. He examines how people functioned in their society and what modes of communication they used. Signing one's name did not necessarily indicate literacy. Surveys the other accepted modes of cultural expression. Outlines the sequence of skill acquisition, and concludes that a growing number of social institutions reinforced the proliferation of schooling after 1800 to develop wider distribution networks of print culture. Elementary literacy was high.