A Practical Grammar of the English Language.

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Creator

Rufus Nutting

Title

A Practical Grammar of the English Language.

Coverage

Montpelier, Vt.

Publisher

E.P. Walton

Date

1829

Subject

5th ed.

Description

After graduating from Dartmouth in 1817, Nutting (1793–‍1878) began teaching at a “female seminary” in Catskill, New York, and soon married one of his pupils. They moved to Ohio and later Michigan, where he insistently taught pupils that the passive voice doesn’t exist in English. Teachers who thought otherwise were causing a horrific “aggregate of injury” because children thereby had lodged in their minds “a disgust, which extends, perhaps, not only to the English but to every other language.” All quite mystifying.