First Experiences with Literature

by Alice Dalgliesh, Patty Smith Hill (Introduction)

Education textbook for teacher’s of elementary students. This is a hard cover book published by Charles Scribner’s Sons with copyrights in 1932 and 1937 with black line illustrations. It is part of the Series on Childhood Education. It presents a wide range of children's literature and illustrates how to integrate literature, storytelling, and creative writing into the elementary classroom. There is a Bibliography and Index. The author, Alice Dalgliesh (1893 -1979) was a naturalized American author and publisher who wrote more than 40 fiction and non-fiction books, mainly for children. She has been called "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction." Three of her books were runners-up for the annual Newbery Medal, the partly autobiographical The Silver Pencil, The Bears on Hemlock Mountain, and The Courage of Sarah Noble, which was also named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list. As the founding editor (in 1934) of Scribner's and Sons Children's Book Division, Dalgliesh published works by award-winning authors and illustrators including Robert A. Heinlein.

162 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

Family: Born in Trinidad, British West Indies; naturalized U.S. citizen; died in Woodbury, CT; daughter of John and Alice (Haynes) Dalgliesh.

Educator, editor, book reviewer, and author, Dalgliesh was an elementary school teacher for nearly seventeen years, and later taught a course in children's literature at Columbia University. From 1934 to 1960 she served as children's book editor for Charles Scribner's Sons. In addition to her book reviews for such magazines as Saturday Review of Literature and Parents' Magazine, Dalgliesh wrote more than forty books for children (most illustrated by Katherine Milhous) and about children's literature.

She received a BA from Columbia University and taught at elementary schools for a while before writing her first book, A Happy School Year, in 1924. Among her books are Newbery Honor books The Silver Pencil (1944), The Bears on Hemlock Mountain (1952), and The Courage of Sarah Noble (1954). The writer Robert Heinlein and Dalgliesh, Heinlein's editor at Scribner's, had conflict in the 1950s. This was revealed in letters published in "Grumbles from the Grave" by Virginia Heinlein.