First Lithuanian textbook on the English language:

Mykolas Tvarauskas' "A Translator or Dictionary"


Shamokin, 1875

"I am the first to come to you, // As a translator of English words." Thus begins the very first Lithuanian book printed in the United States of America.
Its author and publisher was Mykolas Tvarauskas (1844–1921), a polonised Lithuanian born in Suvalkija/Sūduva and a participant in the 1863–1864 Uprising. Like many of the rebels, he fled Lithuania for the West and, having crossed the Atlantic, settled in Shamokin (Pennsylvania), sometimes referred to as the capital of American Lithuanians in the second half of the 19th century. Like most Lithuanians, Tvarauskas worked in the coal mines. Sparing neither time nor money, after work he devoted himself to a Lithuanian cause—he founded a small printing house for Lithuanian publications, where, in 1875, he printed the first Lithuanian book in the New World— "Tłumoczius arba Slownikas" [A Translator or Dictionary].
For a long time, it was thought that not a single copy of this book had survived. However, in 1930, a copy of "Tłumoczius" [A Translator], in fairly good condition with the title page intact and a single page (p. 15–16) missing, was discovered by chance in the attic of a house in Užnemunė. At the time, it was handed over to the library of Vytautas Magnus University. This unique copy, that is, the only surviving copy of the book, is now kept in Vilnius University Library.
Alphabet
Dialogue
English–Lithuanian Dictionary
Lithuanian–English Dictionary
The book is also unique in terms of its content. It is the first Lithuanian textbook on the English language. The bulk of it consists of a short English–Lithuanian and Lithuanian–English dictionary. Tvarauskas intended this textbook to help Lithuanians in America learn English as quickly as possible, so that when asked, "Do you speak English?", they could reply, "I speak English a little."
A publicly available digital copy of "Tłumoczius" [A Translator] can be viewed in Digital Collections.