Coming of Age PDF EPUB

In the Boyhood of Lincoln

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1892
Pages: 234

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About this book

Hezekiah Butterworth built this 1892 novel around the early life of Abraham Lincoln, tracing how a poor frontier boy grew into a man whose character could command the trust of others. The central figure is Jasper, a wandering Tunker (Dunkard) schoolmaster, German-born and self-taught, who teaches in the rough settlements of Indiana where Lincoln spent his boyhood. Through him Butterworth carries the book's guiding idea, the faith that right makes might. Around young Lincoln's schooldays the author weaves cabin tales, pioneer hardship, and material drawn from the era of the Black Hawk War. It is history softened into fiction, aimed largely at the young readers of the 1890s. The book matters less as biography than as a record of how Victorian America chose to remember Lincoln: proof that plain virtue and patient self-teaching could shape a great citizen.

About the author

Hezekiah Butterworth

Hezekiah Butterworth (1839–1905) was an American author, editor, and poet from Warren, Rhode Island. For more than two decades he served as an associate editor of the popular children's magazine The Youth's Companion.