Little Learner Series by Jacob Abbott

Published by Harper & Brothers

The first editions of this series were all published by Harper & Brothers. The copyright dates are noted above.

The first edition of each books as follows:
Book #1- Title page date 1855
Books #2,3- Title page date 1856
Book #4 and #5-Title page date 1857

Book #4 has two copyright dates. There is no evidence that this book was published in 1854 however.

**The 1856 edition of Learning to Think (but not the 1856 version of Learning to Read or the earlier 1855 Learning to Talk) advertised book #5 as Learning about God and Duty. This title does not appear in any other ads and there is no evidence that a book with this title was ever published.

In addition to the first editions noted above, Harper and Brothers published this series in 1866 and 1874. The series was advertised by Harper into the 1890's. Although of interest, book #5 was dropped from the series list by that time.

I have seen three different internal ad pages for this series. The ads precede the title page.

The earliest ad lists only three books. It appears that initially the Harper Picture Books was only going to be a three book series. This three book ad is from an 1855 Learning to Talk book. Most likely it was published prior to the printing of books #2 and #3 because it lists the latter books in a different order then they ultimately were listed in as of 1856.

The 1856 ad lists book #5 as Learning about God and Duty, a book that is most likely a phantom title. This was most likely an anticipated title in early 1856 but by later in 1856 the title had been replaced by Learning about Right and Wrong.

1855 ad	Early 1856 Ad	Later 1856 and into the 1880's

Format:
Cloth. Red. Gilt spies and cover lettering. Embossed cover design. Gilt spine decoration.
6.75” x 5.5”.