Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young

A manual for parents that argues, in 1871, against beating children — and sets out instead how to secure obedience by reason, habit and consistency. Jacob Abbott had run schools for forty years and wrote it as a practical book, with dialogues showing what to say and what not to. It was the most sensible thing on the subject in its century and much of it is still usable. Forty-nine plates of mothers and children by painters such as Mary Cassatt and Eastman Johnson give the book's scenes of family life a visual counterpart across the nineteenth century.