Comments on: A Short History of Mormon Publishing: Commercial LDS Publishing Begins

By: William Morris

William Morris — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:44:04 +0000

Indeed!

By: Th.

Th. — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:50:57 +0000

Yeah, the DA was a fun intellectual exercise for the Deseret University’s staff, but ultimately doomed to failure.

But still dang cool.

(Buy a tshirt!)

By: Kent Larsen

Kent Larsen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:28:41 +0000

Marny, I have heard of that title, but I don’t have a copy. To be honest, I thought the time period (1849-1851) was too short to be worth purchasing a copy, and I assumed that nearly every item (if not all) is included in the Mormon Bibliography (online for free). I’m sure I’ll get a chance to peruse it eventually.

By: Marny Parkin

Marny Parkin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:47:12 +0000

I should have mentioned this earlier. Have you heard of Printing in Deseret: Mormons, Economy, Politics & Utah’s Incunabula, 1849-1851; A History and Descriptive Bibliography by Richard L. Saunders (SLC: Univ. of Utah Press, 2000)?

By: Kent Larsen

Kent Larsen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:02:03 +0000

Th., I don't think I said there was a Life of... series. There was a Faith Promoting Series (14 or 17 volumes, I think). The titles in the series were not all Life of... somebody, although many of the titles were biographical.

By: Kent Larsen

Kent Larsen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:59:17 +0000

Th., you are certainly right about the DA, I wasn’t trying to say that teaching English was its only purpose, just one of them — and that aspect is something that I learned about recently. [Although, to be honest, I can't see how it would be very successful at teaching English. Since LDS immigrants were, by far, from countries that used the roman alphabet, giving them a new orthography would mean they would have to learn the orthography AND the language, instead of just the language. Making it easier to figure out pronunciation from the written language seems like a lot of effort for a small benefit.]

By: Th.

Th. — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:35:22 +0000

It seems like an exciting period, to start from scratch like that. I wonder what book imports were like — maybe this was why BY’s girls all read novels. There weren’t any decent Mormon books to while away the hours with!

I had not heard of the Life of… series before. I’m impressed by those who wrote when there was so little to build from.

By: Th.

Th. — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:32:50 +0000

The Deseret Alphabet served more purposes than just teaching English. It was also intended to make the Saints a community with a unique language. Which, ultimately, could have had the bonus side-effect of making the Saints unable to read outside publications.

Of course, the DA was very much of its time. Spelling reform was all the rage.