Critical Inquiry Critical Inquiry
Patricia Crain is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at New York University. Her research focuses on early American literature and culture, the history of books and reading, histories and literatures of childhood, and word and image studies. She is the author of Reading Children: Literacy, Property and the Dilemmas of Childhood in Nineteenth-century America (2016) and The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter (2000). Recent essays include “Comenius in New York” (forthcoming in Transnational Books for Children 1750-1900), “Book” in Keywords for Children’s Literature (2021), and “How the Virgin Lost Her Book” in The Unfinished Book (2020).