The creation of a Slovak literary standard to serve as a “national language” can be analyzed not only as part of intellectual history but also as part of the social history of rising literacy: a demographically significant population trained to write according to any particular literary standard forms a social interest group generating ethnolinguistic nationalism. Textbooks are interesting sources for both approaches. Focusing on the 1850s as a key moment in the history of Habsburg educational policy, this paper examines four Slovak grammar books written in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution. While the ideal of a “Slovak language” was gaining ground, the continued heterogeneity of literary practices and the persistence of Czech teaching materials suggest that a uniquely Slovak social interest group was much slower to form.