Jaques, John.
Catechism for children, exhibiting the prominent doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By Elder John Jaques. Liverpool, Published by F.D. Richards, 15, Wilton Street. London, For sale at the L.D.S. Book Depot, 35, Jewin-St., City. And by all booksellers, 1854.
iv, [5]–84 p. 17 cm.
View Document
John Jaques, an English convert of 1845, announced his intention, in the Millennial Star of November 19, 1853, to write a catechism for teaching children the doctrines of Mormonism and, beginning in that issue, he serially published fourteen chapters in the Star. In February 1854 the serial publication stopped, apparently because Jaques decided to publish the catechism directly as a book. Five months later Catechism for Children came off the press. The book itself consists of a series of questions and answers arranged in eighteen chapters according to subject. Accompanying many of the answers are supporting passages from the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants.
Catechism for Children is the first broadly distributed LDS children’s book. Its importance, however, goes beyond this bibliographical footnote: for by claiming to list the doctrines of Mormonism, it, along with three or four other books of the period, helped to standardize Mormon theology.
Before the close of the century, Catechism for Children went through ten editions in English, totaling thirty-five thousand copies. It was also translated into Danish, Dutch, German, Hawaiian, and Swedish.
Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley and Chad J. Flake,
A Mormon Fifty: an exhibition in the Harold B. Lee Library in conjunction with the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. (Provo, Utah, Friends of the Brigham Young University Library, 1984). Item 44, p. [32].
Used by permission of the authors.
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY