The Story of An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education

When Charlotte Mason published her fifth volume in 1906, she seemed to have decided it was time to move on to other projects. With the publication of Some Studies in the Formation of Character, the Home Education Series was complete. Having apparently said all that she had to say on the subject of education, it was time to write about something else. Her earlier ambition had been to compose eight volumes of poetry about the life of Christ,^[1] and now she could finally get started.

But 1906 was an important year in the history of education not only because it was the year Miss Mason completed the Home Education Series. Also in that year, an Italian medical doctor named Maria Montessori was asked “to undertake the organisation of some infant schools … in the San Lorenzo slum quarter of Rome.”^[2] While Mason was writing her first poetry volume, Montessori was developing her first “Children’s House.” Here was a novel school indeed, where “children were free to come and go, rest or work, choose what they wanted to work on, [and work] at their own pace.”^[3]

In 1908 Charlotte Mason published the first two volumes of her beloved Saviour of the World series. By that time, “four [of Montessori’s] Casa in all were in existence, three in Rome, one in Milan.”^[4] In 1909, Mason published her third Saviour of the World volume, and “Montessori published a detailed exposition of her method under the title, Il Metodo Della Pedagogia Scientifica Applicato All’ Educazione Infantile Nelle Casa dei Bambini.”^[5]

At that time Montessori’s book on her innovative method was available only in Italian. By 1910, “Montessori had earned recognition as a significant innovative educator in her native Italy, where she presided over a demonstration school and a training institute for directresses.”^[6] While Montessori’s fame was spreading within her home country, Mason was continuing with her own project, publishing the fourth volume of The Saviour of the World that same year.

In August 1911, the year that Mason published her fifth poetry volume, English speakers were finally introduced to Maria Montessori for the first time. The introduction came in the form of an article by Josephine Tozier in the Fortnightly Review entitled “An Educational Wonder Worker: Maria Montessori’s Methods.” ^[7]  Readers were intrigued. As the level of interest increased, an American named Anne E. George quietly began translating Montessori’s foundational book Il Metodo Della Pedagogia Scientifica into English.

And then came 1912. This was the pivotal year during which Montessori was thrust into the limelight and Charlotte Mason was forced to respond. It all began in the spring when Heinemann and Co. published George’s translation of Il Metodo under the title The Montessori Method.^[8] Almost simultaneously, Charlotte Mason put her poetry writing on hold and redirected her focus to the theory of knowledge. She began with a letter to The Times Educational Supplement which was published on February 6, 1912. Entitled “Miss Charlotte Mason on Knowledge,” it laid out the broad outlines of a claim. Five letters would follow, each adding more and more details to her thesis about the role of knowledge in education. The sixth letter, published in the spring of 1912, finally revealed what I believe was her primary motivation for the series:

We are at the parting of the ways; our latest educational authority, one who knows to love little children, would away with all tales and histories that appeal to the imagination; let children learn by means of things, is her mandate; and the charm and tenderness with which it is delivered may well blind us to its desolating character. We recognize Rousseau, of course, and his Emile, that self-sufficient person who should know nothing of the past, should see no visions, allow no authority.^[9]

Who was this “latest educational authority” who would make experience rather than knowledge the foundation of education? Lest there be any doubt, Mason called her out by name in a seventh letter to The Times dated December 3, 1912. Entitled “Miss Mason on the Montessori System,” the article was a devastating critique of the new method of education that was taking the world by storm. In the final paragraph she wrote:

Because a child is a person, because his education should make him more of a person, because he increases upon such ideas as are to be found in books, pictures, and the like, because the more of a person he is the better work he will turn out of whatever kind, because there is a general dearth of persons of fine character and sound judgment, for these and other reasons I should regard the spread of schools conducted on any method which contemns knowledge in favour of appliances and employments as a calamity, no matter how prettily the children may for the present behave. Knowledge is the sole lever by which character is elevated, the sole diet upon which mind is sustained.^[10]

Charlotte Mason was busy from February to December writing these seven missives to The Times. The year 1912 ended with no new poetry volume from Miss Mason, the beginning of a substantial hiatus in her beloved project.

In the early days of 1913, Charlotte Mason took steps to ensure a lasting audience for her message about knowledge and the Montessori method. In January, she collected the seven letters into a 53-page pamphlet entitled The Basis of National Strength. Mason urged all the members of her organization, the Parents’ National Educational Union (PNEU), to read it:

The writer ventures to hope that readers of the Parents’ Review will give their careful attention to this pamphlet, because it concerns us as a Society to influence public opinion on the subject treated of in these letters, that is, the general neglect of knowledge and the mischievous effect of this neglect upon national life.^[11]

At the May 1913 PNEU Conference in London, people were talking about the new booklet. House of Education graduate Laura Faunce mentioned it in her main stage presentation. Mason did not make the trip to London herself to speak, but she did provide a paper to be read on the opening day by her close friend Henrietta Franklin. What topic would she choose? What would be the logical sequel to her immensely important Basis of National Strength? Mason chose the topic “Self-Education.” Early in the paper she wrote:

I am jealous for the children; every modern educational movement tends to belittle them intellectually; and none more so than a late ingenious attempt…

This “late ingenious attempt” was of course the Montessori Method. Mason was not letting up for a moment on her sustained critique of this new innovation.

Immediately following the reading of Mason’s paper, Miss Faunce took to the stage to speak on “How We Teach Citizenship.” In her talk she stated:

Those who have read the papers entitled “The Basis of National Strength,” which appeared in the Times Educational Supplement during the Spring of last year, will recognize how Miss Mason carries out the theories she presented in them, in the programme of work set for use in the P.U.S.^[12]

Thus we see that The Basis of National Strength was not considered by the PNEU to be a departure from or evolution of Mason’s earlier ideas. Rather it was welcomed as a careful elucidation of the method as it was already being practiced. In a certain sense, then, there was nothing groundbreaking about The Basis of National Strength. Charlotte Mason had been emphasizing knowledge since her first public lectures about educational theory in the winter of 1885–1886. A sentence from those lectures, later published as Home Education, would have been right at home in the brand new 1913 pamphlet:

Why must the child learn? Why do we eat? Is it not in order that the body may live and grow and be able to fulfil its functions? Precisely so, the mind must be sustained and developed by means of the food convenient for it, the mental pabulum of assimilated knowledge.^[13]

And although the sixth letter of 1912 insinuated that “we recognize Rousseau” in the Montessori Method, it must be understood that Mason nevertheless always held Rousseau in selective esteem. As recently as 1910, she had asserted that Rousseau was “for all time” and “we all owe [gratitude] to the genius.”^[14]

But in another sense there was something groundbreaking about The Basis of National Strength. It was not the content of the ideas; Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education had been remarkably stable for three decades. What was new was the audience and the tone. Miss Mason was now proclaiming her ideas on the national stage. She was calling to England in a prophetic voice. She would not keep silent about her own method while England became infatuated with Montessori’s. In February 1913 Mason wrote to Henrietta Franklin:

I feel more and more ashamed that we should be keeping all this good thing to ourselves. We must make it national, quite independent of us…^[15]

According to biographer Essex Cholmondeley, a new phase had begun in Mason’s work. Cholmondeley explains:

The story of the ‘great national work’ begins a few years earlier. The soil had been prepared by the series of letters which had appeared in The Times (1912) … These Charlotte had republished in the form of a pamphlet called ‘The Basis of National Strength.’

Before Miss Mason had begun her work for parents she had wondered how to reach them, and a simple course of lectures in Bradford had opened the way. Now the problem was a new one. ‘Knowledge is the basis of national strength,’ she had written; but how could a nation-wide school provide that knowledge?^[16]

The fact was that a nation-wide school could not be staffed solely by graduates of Mason’s House of Education. The breakthrough Mason was looking for came in the following year when a schoolteacher from a poor mining district heard about the PNEU method. The teacher, Miss Ambler, met with Miss Mason. “After this meeting,” she recalled, “I procured some of Miss Mason’s publications, notably her first one, ‘Home Education,’ and studied them all.”^[17] Everything she read made sense, but could this method translate from the home schoolroom to the large classroom? That is the question Ambler asked:

I said, “If Miss Mason’s principles are the true ones, they must be the ones to adopt, and a way must be found whatever circumstances obtain.”^[18]

Miss Ambler put the method to the test in her own classroom in Drighlington. And it was a great success. House of Education graduate and eyewitness Miss Ellen Parish described the result:

We entered the school, a long, low building, which was also grey and dark; the district in which the school is placed is a very poor one, distinctly a mining district, with the dwellings of the miners all round, more or less neglected and sad. On entering, we were greeted by Miss Ambler, who was delighted to see us, but much more intent on shewing us the work which was going on than on thinking of us or of herself. In the schoolroom I found the most utter peace I have ever found in all my life. It was a realisation of the hopes we have been cherishing of supplying the children of the less privileged classes with mental food which they can digest… I think it is a miracle.^[19]

The miracle convinced Miss Mason that the number of children educated using her method could increase exponentially. A vision was thus born to bring the Charlotte Mason method to all children. This seemed to be achievable by following the precedent of Drighlington and encouraging other council schools to adopt the PNEU method. It would be a movement; perhaps it could be called the “PNEU for All” movement or the “Charlotte Mason Method for All” movement. No, those names would not do. Rather, it would be called the “Liberal Education for All” movement. But this was not a call to a traditional liberal arts education.^[20] This was a call to council schools to adopt the very specific theory and practice of the PNEU. Dr. Jack Beckman explains:

[Mason’s] dream was to communicate a universal theory of education, later to be termed the ‘liberal education for all’ movement in 1917. In short, Charlotte Mason tied directly educational theory to a setpiece of classroom practices, a frame that was operationalised within her own system.  She ensured control of quality by creating an intending teacher training college, a series of schools founded upon her ideas and curriculum, and the curriculum that applied her philosophy in practice.^[21]

Ultimately it was Mason’s insistence on conformance to the particulars of her unique philosophy and practice that impeded the final adoption by council school leaders. Again Dr. Beckman explains:

Though Mason had contact with many of the luminaries of the educational world, their advice was usually similar in tone — because the nature of the method was singular, its ability to become assimilated into the larger State system would necessitate a level of accommodation such that it would lose the peculiar singularity which made it unique.^[22]

But at the dawn of the movement, Mason was all optimism. According to Cholmondeley, Miss Ambler adopted the Mason method in April of 1914.^[23] That same month the Parents’ Review announced the recent publication of Mason’s sixth poetry volume.^[24] After a gap of three years, she had finally completed the next installment. It would be her last. She would never complete the final two volumes.^[25] The month that marked the beginning of “a liberal education for all” also marked the end of the poetic reflection on The Saviour of the World.

The following year, as summer dawned in1915, Mason and Parish “planned together a campaign to introduce the P.U.S. programmes and the teaching method as widely as possible.”^[26] Cholmondeley describes how it transpired:

Miss Parish’s untiring and inspired work was carried on under great difficulties. She travelled far and wide over Great Britain visiting large city schools as well as those in remote villages. Her love and understanding of children, her quiet and gentle ways, her firm grasp of Charlotte Mason’s methods, endeared her to the teachers who were now, in several parts of England, beginning to follow the P.U.S. programmes.^[27]

As more schools began adopting the method, Mason realized that more teacher training was needed. In August 1916 a conference for teachers was held at the Training College in Bingley. At this conference, Mason read a paper entitled “Theory” while Agnes Drury read a companion paper entitled “Practice.” The papers were then published together in the September 1916 issue of The Parents’ Review. In addition, Cholmondeley reports that the two papers were published as a standalone booklet entitled A Liberal Education for All, with “copies being sent to all Directors of Education in the country.”^[28]

Also in 1916 Mr. H. A. L. Fisher became president of the Board of Education in England. Cholmondeley describes one of his key priorities:

During his time of office it was the aim of the Board to provide further education for boys and girls who were leaving school at the age of thirteen or fourteen. Young people at work in shops or industry should spend some of their working hours in continuation schools. But what should they study? ‘Something useful,’ was the popular answer, ‘something which will help them with their work.’^[29]

This popular view flew in the face of Mason’s view of personhood and education. She believed that the utilitarian view of education was “profoundly immoral.”^[30] Emboldened by the growing national interest in her ideas, Mason decided to speak out on this front too. She began work on a booklet entitled A Liberal Education for All in Continuation Schools which was published in 1918.^[31] According to Cholmondeley, Mr. Fisher received a copy of the pamphlet, and soon thereafter appointed House of Education graduate Helen Wix to be a school inspector.^[32]

The year after publishing the booklet on continuation schools, Charlotte Mason took a survey of her writings on the “liberal education for all” movement and realized one gap remained. The cover page of the July 1919 Parents’ Review included a note by her which explained:

We have frequently invited the attention of the readers of the P.R. to the progress of the Liberal Education Movement in Elementary and Continuation Schools, and feel we owe it to them to exhibit the principles of education and standard of progress for Secondary Schools.^[33]

The note was attached to the massive 75-page article entitled “The Liberal Education for All Movement: A Liberal Education in Secondary Schools” which comprised nearly the entire Parents’ Review issue. The article represents Mason’s supreme defense of her method as suitable for secondary school students in all England, if not all the world. With this article, Mason had now given detailed guidance on the education of all young people from elementary age all the way through the end of the continuation school.

After completing the series of “Liberal Education for All” papers, Mason refocused her attention on another project that had been on her mind for quite some time. As early as 1911, she had identified the need to write a detailed explanation of her 20-point synopsis. These principles had been approved by the PNEU Executive Committee in 1904 and were printed at the opening of each volume of the Home Education Series. However, it was up to the reader to piece together which principle applied to which chapters, pages, or paragraphs in the series. On May 16, 1911, Mason wrote to Henrietta Franklin:

I have a notion that I shall write a paper on each point of the Synopsis —  but don’t hurry me…^[34]

At some point between 1911 and 1921 Mason wrote that paper. Biographer Margaret Coombs describes it as follows: “she finally linked the Synopsis points to her familiar educational themes, a considerable achievement.”^[35] It truly was a considerable achievement, resulting in 202 pages worth of material. This was too much for a Parents’ Review article, and perhaps too much even for a booklet; by comparison, The Basis of National Strength was only 53 pages. If not a booklet, then perhaps a full-length book?

A book it would be. But not a new volume in the Home Education Series. It would be a standalone book, containing in one place the most important writing she had done since slowing down her poetry work in 1911. But two more elements were needed to round it out.

First, perhaps sensing that the end of her life was drawing near, she decided it was time to chronicle how she developed her philosophy of education in the first place. Coombs explains this new portion of prose reserved for the new book:

Emphasising the mind’s hunger for knowledge and the sacredness of personality, Miss Mason revealed for the first time her life-changing engagement with the home education of Miss Brandreth’s insatiably curious young Anglo-Indian niece and nephews…^[36]

Second, she felt compelled to write about the future, again perhaps sensing that her time remaining was short. Elsie Kitching reflects on this final piece:

I do not think it was just a casual circumstance that led Miss Mason to put as a supplement at the end of her last book the chapter on “Too Wide a Mesh.” Did she leave it as a last word of caution, or, possibly as the key to difficulties yet to be solved?^[37]

The final step was to assemble all of these writings into a single volume. This task was completed in October 1921.^[38] Mason organized the book as follows:

1. Introduction. This fascinating 21-page chapter contains a blending of new and old material. First, it unveiled Mason’s brand-new autobiographical account of how she developed her method, including the long-awaited account of her interaction Miss Brandreth’s niece and nephews. Second, it incorporated many paragraphs from Mason’s “Theory” presentation from the 1916 teacher conference at Bingley.

2. Self-education (Book I, Chapter I). This chapter is a nearly-verbatim copy of Mason’s paper from the May 1913 PNEU Conference in London.

3. Book I, Chapters II–X. These 202 pages are Mason’s previously unpublished exposition where “she finally linked the Synopsis points to her familiar educational themes.”^[39] These chapters are an invaluable guide to understanding Mason’s Twenty Principles.

4. A Liberal Education in Elementary Schools (Book II, Chapter I). This chapter contains the bulk of Mason’s “Theory” presentation from the 1916 teacher conference at Bingley — those portions that were not moved to the Introduction.

5. A Liberal Education in Secondary Schools (Book II, Chapter II). This chapter is an abridgement of Mason’s July 1919 Parents’ Review article “The Liberal Education for All Movement: A Liberal Education in Secondary Schools.” While most of the core text is the same, student samples were removed from the original in order to make it a manageable size for the book.

6. The Scope of Continuation Schools (Book II, Chapter III). This chapter is essentially Mason’s 1918 booklet A Liberal Education for All in Continuation Schools which had been so well received by Board of Education president H. A. L. Fisher.

7. The Basis of National Strength (Book II, Chapter IV) This lengthy chapter is the permanent home of the six letters Mason composed for The Times Educational Supplement in 1912. Although the seventh letter of 1912, “Miss Mason on the Montessori System,” was not included in the book, the veiled reference to the Dottoressa may still be found on p. 338 (“our latest educational authority”).

8. Too Wide a Mesh (Supplementary). This closing chapter to the book is the original composition commented on by Elsie Kitching.

Although Mason’s manuscript was completed in 1921, the book itself would not be published until after her death in January 1923. The final preparations for publication were made by a Board of Trustees established by Mason’s will. A March 1924 letter from Henrietta Franklin to Elsie Kitching implies a conscious decision to make this book a standalone volume, not part of the Home Education Series:

Your views ought certainly to be considered in the matter as you will have most of the work to do, and I think too that a larger book looks nicer, and that it might be well to have this one not included in the series.^[40]

An announcement appeared in the August 1924 Parents’ Review announcing the upcoming release:

It is delightful to be able to announce that Miss Mason’s valuable summary of her educational philosophy will appear shortly. It will be published by Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., with a foreword by the Hon. and Rev. E. Lyttleton, late Headmaster of Eton, and will be entitled: An Essay towards a Philosophy of Education.^[41]

And then finally in the January 1925 issue of The Parents’ Review we read that “An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education: A Liberal Education for all” was published on “January 1st, 1925.”^[42] The book was indeed larger than the volumes in the Home Education Series and was clearly meant to stand alone. Readers of this first edition of An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education were in for a surprise at the end. On the last page of the main text, just before the index, this note appeared:

[See note under Table of Contents for (a) the large number of children’s answers, and (b) Book IV of which only Chapter I appears in this volume].^[43]

This mysterious note is confusing for two reasons. First, the volume has only two books; Book I (pages 23–234) and Book II (pages 235–342). Second, how could “Chapter I” of “Book IV” appear in this volume if there is no Book IV?

To unravel this mystery, first we need to look at the note that appears under the Table of Contents, on p. xxii:

The Trustees have, at the request of the Publishers, been obliged to reduce the original volume. Two important sections on the practical work have been omitted,—(A)—Children’s examination answers and, (B)—Some discussions of the method by Educational Authorities and teachers. A pamphlet will be issued from the P.N.E.U. Office, 26, Victoria Street, S.W., covering section B. Sets of children’s answers (A) can be seen at the P.N.E.U. Office, 26, Victoria Street, S.W.^[44]

This note indicates that the Trustees removed some of the content which Miss Mason had intended to be in her book. Since the decision was made by the Trustees instead of Miss Mason herself, it is likely the decision was made after Mason’s death. The note promises a forthcoming pamphlet with some of the missing content. A pamphlet was, in fact, published by the P.N.E.U. office, entitled Some Impressions of the Ambleside Method, with the subtitle, “Arranged by CHARLOTTE M. MASON to accompany her last book, ‘An Essay towards a Philosophy of Education.’” It contains third-party comments on the method, correlating it with section B. Unfortunately, however, the document is not dated so it is not clear when it was published relative to the note of the Trustees.

Nevertheless, this note under the Table of Contents does not really explain a “Book IV” of which only “only Chapter I appears in this volume.” Some clarification may be found by consulting Mason’s personal files in the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection. Box CM6 includes file cmc40B which includes Mason’s draft documents for the closing chapters of her final book. These documents include the following handwritten notes:

• “Book III No. 1” on a typed manuscript entitled “Too Wide a Mesh” (item 6).
• “Book III Chapter II” on an annotated copy of the 1910 Parents’ Review article “Two Educational Ideals” (item 7).
• “Book III Chapter III” on a typed manuscript “Opinions & Principles,” which appeared as a Parents’ Review article in 1910 (item 8).
• “Book III No. 4” on a collection of pages containing third-party comments on the method (item 9).

These notes indicate that Mason envisioned a “Book III” with four chapters. The Trustees, however, only included the first in the book, “Too Wide a Mesh.” When the Trustees reduced the size of Book III to one chapter, we may suspect they changed the section title to “Supplementary.” Surprisingly, however, item 9 in the cmc40B file also includes a cover page with this label, not in Mason’s hand:

Some Impressions of the Ambleside Method
Approved by Miss C. M. Mason as Chapter IV Book IV in An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education

Why does the cover page of this item say “Book IV” when the handwritten note on the next page by Mason says “Book III”? Perhaps the Trustees contemplated separating out “The Basis of National Strength” into a Book III. Whatever the explanation, it is evident that what is now called “Supplementary” was intended by Mason to contain four chapters. Of these, only the first made it into the book, and the fourth was published as a separate booklet.

That leaves the 1910 articles “Two Educational Ideals” and “Opinions & Principles.” Neither were republished until the 2023 edition of An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education published by Smidgen Press. This important release restored Mason’s vision by including “Two Educational Ideals” and “Some Impressions of the Ambleside Method” in the volume.

The restoration process continues with today’s announcement of a free online version of An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education that includes all of the original content.

As with our editions of Home Education, Parents and Children, School Education, Ourselves, and Formation of Character, this new edition of An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education features several unique characteristics:

1. It is designed first and foremost for online viewing. Page numbers are consistent with contemporary published versions but are inserted inline with the text so as not to interrupt the reader. This allows the best in readability while still making it possible to share with others what page you are on.

2. It contains no editorial additions or clarifications. You only see what Charlotte Mason and her Trustees approved. Everything was transcribed directly from the 1925 first edition (except for the extra chapters which were transcribed from original sources).

3. It contains everything: All the front matter, the table of contents, and everything that greeted (or was intended for) the historical reader of these volumes.

4. It was developed using the Charlotte Mason Poetry transcription process which has proven to result in very high-quality transcriptions with very few errors. We wanted to create a text that you could copy and paste with confidence.

5. It incorporates the formatting of the original edition. This includes typeface alterations such as bold, italics, and small-caps. It also includes indentation and line spacing to match the original as closely as possible. Why did we follow this formatting so carefully? Because just as facial expression accompanies the spoken word and gives it shades of meaning, so do typeface customizations deliver a shade of meaning to the written word. Now you can see a transcribed version that has the formatting attributes that consistently match the original.

6. It supports direct hyperlinks to individual pages. Now you can email a friend or post in social media with a link to the exact page where you found a particular quote. Simply append the page number to the URL. For example, to share a link to page 340, append #p340 to the URL as follows: https://charlottemasonpoetry.org/an-essay-towards-a-philosophy-of-education/#p340

7. It is absolutely free. By that we mean it is free for you to use in any way you want, with no strings attached. What do we mean by that? We mean that you can translate it, print it, and even publish it commercially. The text is our gift for the community. Charlotte Mason Poetry is a labor of love. Our goal is to promote Charlotte Mason’s ideas. And we hope that an absolutely free edition of An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education will go a long way to getting these words and ideas into the hands of more people.

Read An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education at this link: https://charlottemasonpoetry.org/an-essay-towards-a-philosophy-of-education/

Endnotes

^[1] Parish, E. (1923). In Memoriam, p. 60.

^[2] Cohen, S. (1974). “The Montessori movement in England,” in History of Education, volume 3 (pp. 51–67), Abingdon: Routledge, p. 52.

^[3] Ibid., p. 53.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] Gutek, G. (2004). The Montessori Method: The Origins of an Educational Innovation, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, p. 21.

^[7] Cohen, p. 53.

^[8] Ibid., p. 55.

^[9] Mason, C. (1913). The Basis of National Strength. Ambleside: The St. Oswald Press, p. 43.

^[10] Ibid., p. 53.

^[11] The Parents’ Review, vol. 24, p. 157.

^[12] Faunce, L. (1913). “How We Teach Citizenship,” in The Parents’ Review, vol. 24, p. 512.

^[13] Mason, C. (1886). Home Education (1^st edition). London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., p. 127.

^[14] Mason, C. (1910). “Two Educational Ideals,” in The Parents’ Review, vol. 21, p. 802.

^[15] Cholmondeley, E. (2000), The Story of Charlotte Mason, Petersfield: Child Light Ltd., p. 122.

^[16] Ibid.

^[17] Ambler (1916). “Some Experiences of a Pioneer School,” in The Parents’ Review, vol. 27, p. 836.

^[18] Ibid.

^[19] Ibid., pp. 848–849.

^[20] For more background on the term “liberal education” in Charlotte Mason’s day, see “What is a Liberal Education?”

^[21] Beckman, J. (2003). Lessons to Learn — Charlotte Mason’s House of Education And Resistance to Taxonomic Drift (1892–1960), pp. 22–23.

^[22] Ibid., pp. 188–189.

^[23] Ibid., p. 123.

^[24] The Parents’ Review, vol. 25, p. 314.

^[25] According to Ellen Parish, Mason’s intention was to write eight poetry volumes (see In Memoriam p. 60). Mason did leave behind handwritten drafts of the seventh volume which have been transcribed by the Charlotte Mason Poetry team.

^[26] Cholmondeley, E. (2000), p. 124.

^[27] Ibid., p. 125.

^[28] Ibid., p. 126.

^[29] Ibid., pp. 165–166.

^[30] Mason, C. (1925). An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education,  London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Co., Ltd., p. 280.

^[31] The year 1918 is given on p. xxii of Mason, C. (1954). An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (3^rd edition), London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. A version of the paper was also published in the February 1919 Parents’ Review (vol. 30, pp. 88–107).

^[32] Cholmondeley, E. (2000), p. 166.

^[33] The Parents’ Review, vol. 30, p. 481.

^[34] Mason, C. (1911). Wallet of copies (transcripts) of letters from Charlotte Mason (to Henrietta Franklin), Ancaster: Redeemer University College, p. 16.

^[35] Coombs, M. (2015). Charlotte Mason: Hidden Heritage and Educational Influence, Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, p. 243.

^[36] Ibid., pp. 242–243.

^[37] The Parents’ Review, vol. 38, p. 530

^[38] Coombs, M. (2015), p. xx.

^[39] Ibid., p. 243.

^[40] Franklin, H. (1924). Letter dated 18^th March, 1924.

^[41] The Parents’ Review, vol. 35, p. 528.

^[42] The Parents’ Review, vol. 36, p. 1.

^[43] Mason, C. (1925), p. 348.

^[44] Ibid., p. xxii.

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