Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880

This engrossing book traces the social history of Protestant Sunday schools from their origins in the 1790s—when they taught literacy to poor working children—to their consolidation in the 1870s, when they had become the primary source of new church members for the major Protestant denominations.  Anne M. Boylan describes not only the schools themselves but also their place within a national network of evangelical institutions, their complementary relationship to local common schools, and their connection with the changing history of youth and women in the nineteenth century.  Her book is a signal contribution to our understanding of American religious and social history, education history, women’s history, and the history of childhood.