William Holmes McGuffey was an American professor and university president who is best known for writing the McGuffey’s Readers, one of the first and most widely used series of textbooks in the United States. It is estimated that at least 125 million copies of this Eclectic Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster’s Dictionary.

McGuffey was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania in 1800. In 1802 the McGuffey family moved further out into the frontier at Tuscarawas County, Ohio. He attended and graduated from Pennsylvania’s Washington College, where he became an instructor. In 1836, he left Miami to become president of Cincinnati College, where he also served as a distinguished teacher and lecturer. He left Cincinnati in 1839 to become the 4th president of Ohio University. In 1845, McGuffey moved to Charlottesville, Virginia where he became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia.

He died in 1873, a success as an educator, lecturer and author.