North Carolina Reader

The North Carolina Reader, published in 1851 by Calvin H. Wiley, the state's first superintendent of public schools, was the first in a series of textbooks prepared for use in the public school system. The book was "a work designed to familiarize the minds of the young with the character, history, and resources of their own well-favored father-land." It contained a brief history of the discovery, settlement, and progress of the state; political and oratorical exercises, some written by North Carolinians; and chronological and historical tables.

Wiley published the Reader at his own expense. Upon becoming the superintendent of public schools in 1853, he disposed of his copyright, sold all copies and the plates of the book at cost, and refused to accept further remuneration for his work, which became a standard school text. Wiley turned over his textbook work to a University of North Carolina professor, who edited two additional volumes in the series.