Orbis Pictus, or Orbis Sensualium Pictus (Visible World in Pictures), is a textbook for children written by Czech educator John Amos Comenius and published in 1658. It was the first widely used children's textbook with pictures, published first in Latin and German and later republished in many European languages.[1] It has been described as "probably the first purpose-made children's picturebook".[2] The revolutionary[3] book quickly spread around Europe and became the defining children's textbook for centuries.
Contents
The book is divided into chapters illustrated by copperplate prints, which are described in the accompanying text. In most editions, the text is given in both Latin and the child's native language. The book has 150 chapters and covers a wide range of subjects:[citation needed]
Plaque commemorating the publication of Orbis Pictus in Levoča
Originally published in Latin and German in 1658 in Nuremberg, the book soon spread to schools in Germany and other countries. The first English edition by Charles Hoole was published in 1659. The first quadrilingual edition (in Latin, German, Italian and French) was published in 1666. The first Czech translation was published in the 1685 quadrilingual edition (together with Latin, German and Hungarian), by the Breuer publishing house in Lőcse (today Levoča, Slovakia). In the years 1670 to 1780, new editions were published in various languages, with both the pictures and text content being improved.[citation needed]
Orbis Pictus had a long-lasting influence on children's education. It was a precursor of both audio-visual techniques and the lexical approach in language learning.[4]
In 1930 Otto Neurath claimed that images in Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft constituted a new Orbis Pictus.[5]
Comenius, Johann Amos; Charles Hoole (1777). Joh. Amos Comenii Orbis Sensualium Pictus: Hoc Est Omnium Principalium in Mundo Rerum, & in Vita Actionum, Pictura & Nomenclatura. London: S. Leacroft. OCLC166163. User Review - I was interested in this book after reading about Comenius on Wikipedia and being referred to Google Book Search as a source of this as an early children's textbook. A discouraging flaw in this book is that pages 8-15 are scanned out of order, and there are two copies of page 12 and no copy of page 8 in the resulting images. It would be good to have a direct way to report such trouble without having to go searching around the help pages. - translation by Charles Hoole, at Google Book Search
