Deseret Reader

5H, 1869 Book of Mormon reader

Description

At the October (1868) General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Brigham Young announced that "many thousand small books, called the first and second readers," in the Deseret Alphabet were on their way to Utah to be used in the public schools. Ten thousand copies of these primers were printed in New York and offered for sale in Utah at fifteen and twenty cents each. This booklet is one of those original readers.

Disagreement exists relative to the origin of the phonetic characters known as the Deseret Alphabet.

Regardless of who conceived the idea, a committee of three was appointed in October 1853, by the Board of Regents of the University of Deseret "to work out a system of orthography and prepare a schoolbook in new characters."

A few months later, the Deseret News (January 19, 1854) announced: "The Board of Regents, in company with the Governor and heads of depart-ments, have adopted a new alphabet consisting of thirty-eight characters." It added that the Board, despairing of simplifying "the English language [had decided] to invent an entirely new and original set of characters." This volume is an example of this attempt, and is now a collector's item.

Notes

Blue hardback with black spine, image of the Salt Lake Temple on front cover, full description of the language of Desert on front end of book, some rubbing on binding, intact, overall good condition.