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# An entrée into the world of 18th and 19th century Greek textbooks
- URL: https://thepatrologist.com/an-entree-into-the-world-of-18th-and-19th-century-greek-textbooks/
- Published: 2018-02-21T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2018-02-21T15:00:00.000Z
- Author: Seumas Macdonald
- Tags: DH, Greek, #Migrated-1784156034836, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 22:54

Let me tell you about a little side-project I'm cooking up.

One of the great advantages Latin students have in seeking a lot of reading content, is that between the easy reading material that some Latin teachers are pumping out, and the products of the Direct Method, there's a fair amount of reading material to get stuck into. (See [here](https://thepatrologist.com/direct-method-latin-and-greek-books-repostupdate/), [here](http://indwellinglanguage.com/limen-a-latin-teaching-portal/?ref=thepatrologist.com#materials), [here](https://vivariumnovum.it/risorse-didattiche/pratica-didattica/libri-scolastici?ref=thepatrologist.com)).

Not so with Greek. The Direct Method advocates produced not very much Greek, unfortunately. You can see some on the second half of that [vivarium novum](https://vivariumnovum.it/risorse-didattiche/pratica-didattica/libri-scolastici?ref=thepatrologist.com) page. However they are not very accessible either.

So, what I've been doing is scouring the 18th and 19th century textbooks, a range of books with endless variations on "A First Greek Reader". I have almost 30 in scanned pdfs. Some are more "directish method", others are very traditional, almost all are far more advanced than "easy greek reading" should begin at.

The project:

- Digitise: create plain text copies of all the readings in these books.
- Lemmatise: lemmatise all the texts as well
- Gloss: produce a version with appropriate glossing to help readers
- Annotate: provide notes to go with each text to help readers
- Record: audio files for each text
- Scaffold: write Greek language content as both pre-reading and post-reading material.

Actually, there are some more things going on behind the scenes as well. Most of my side-projects these days involve overlapping and interlocking methods and goals. In this case, the goal is to create a digital resource of freely available material that helps bridge the long plateau between "1st year Greek" (not a real thing) and "fluently read authentic high-register ancient texts" (a real thing and quite difficult).

More on this, obviously, as it develops...

Actually, since I've penned this post, there are at least 2 people doing OCRs of this kind of material. So that means I'm probably going to shift my focus from simply digitising, to making more of this material more usable.