The Hoosier School-Master

The Hoosier Schoolmaster... pictures the country school in which custom prescribed a constant warfare between the master and the big boys, the community spelling-school, the different forms of bigoted and illiterate preaching that were offered to the new settlers, the amusing attempts at formality in the proceedings of the courts, and other features of pioneer life as the author had seen them.... There is a great variety of characters who, while they are drawn pretty much in unshaded black and white, have enough truth to human nature to seem real. A sufficient humor pervades the whole, the action never drags and the book... deserves the great vogue it has had since its publication in 1871. -William B. Cairns; The Encyclopedia Americana (1920) This is a high-quality edition of Edward Eggleston's classic ground-breaking first novel, with an Introduction by Gustavo Bondoni, author of The Curse of El Bastardo, and Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places.