Notes

Chapter 1

1.     Paine, “A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North-America,” 38; Anthony Trollope, North America, chap. 15, “Literature,” 1:295; Krapp, The English Language in America, 1:20.

2.     Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 3:290, entry for April 15, 1778; Samuel Johnson, review of Lewis Evans, Map and Account of the English Colonies in America.

3.     Jefferson to Waldo, August 16, 1813, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Lipscomb and Bergh, 6:188; Simpson, The Politics of American English, 1776–1850, 33. See also Basker, “Samuel Johnson and the American Common Reader,” Age of Johnson, 6:3, from which I draw in this section on Johnson and America. See also Basker, Samuel Johnson in the Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, VA: The Johnsonians, 1999).

4.     Hawthorne, Passages from English Note-Books.

5.     Melville, Moby Dick, chap. 104, “The Fossil Whale”; Fischer, Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field, 150–51.

6.     Jefferson to Waldo, August 16, 1813, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Lipscomb and Bergh, 6:188. On Jefferson’s relationship to American English and dictionaries, see Percy, “Political Perspectives on Linguistic Innovation in Independent America.” I have taken a few of Jefferson’s remarks from her citations. See also Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 133–36; and Krapp, The English Language in America, 1:9. See also Lynch, The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, 116–38.

7.     European Magazine and London Review 12 (August 1787): 114.

8.     Jefferson to Waldo, August 16, 1813, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Lipscomb and Bergh, 6:188.

9.     Jefferson to Adams, August 15, 1820; Jefferson to William S. Cardell, January 27, 1821 (both cited by Percy in “Political Perspectives on Linguistic Innovation in Independent America,” 50).

10.   Adams to Edmund Jenings, September 23, 1780, in The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 9:510. Also cited in Krapp, The English Language in America, 7.

11.   John Witherspoon, Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, nos. 5–7 (May 9, 16, 23, and 30, 1781), under the heading “Druid,” reprinted in Mathews, The Beginnings of American English, 13–30.

12.   Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, appendix C.

13.   On Walsh’s “Appeal,” see Eaton, “From Anglophile to Nationalist.” Irving, “English Writers on America,” in The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

14.   Nevins, American Social History as Recorded by British Travelers, 3; Lodge, “Colonialism in the United States”; Mencken, The American Language (2nd rev. and enl. ed., 1921), 19–21, 24, 285 (see pp. 14–20 in the section, “The English Attack,” for a few of the more lurid examples of British condemnations); Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 1:128.

15.   Edinburgh Review 15 (October–January 1809–10): 446; Sydney Smith, review of Adam Sybert, Statistical Annals of the United States, Edinburgh Review 33 (1820): 80; Martineau, Society in America, 2:206–7.

16.   Pickering is cited by Mencken, The American Language (1937), 17; Channing, The Importance and Means of a National Literature, 2, 15–16. A few of these and other citations that follow are drawn from Mesick’s book, The English Traveller in America.

17.   See Matthiesen’s landmark study, American Renaissance, which examines the first “flowering” of American literature in the 1850s. See also Volo and Volo, The Antebellum Period, chap. 8, for a perspective on the efforts of early American authors to define and raise the status of American literature.

18.   Emerson, The American Scholar and “Nature,” in The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Spiller and Ferguson, vol. 1.

19.   Landor, Charles James Fox: A Commentary on His Life and Character, ed. Stephen Wheeler (London, 1907), 146ff.; Dwight, Remarks on the Review of Inchiquin’s Letters, iv.

20.   John Mactaggart, Three Years in Canada, 2:325–26.

21.   Boucher, Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words, xxiii; Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 127–29. Boucher’s Glossary was unpublished in his lifetime.

22.   Read, “Amphi-Atlantic English,” 59, 81–82; Martineau, Society in America, cited by Mary Orne Pickering, Life of John Pickering, 432.

23.   Read, “British Recognition of American Speech in the Eighteenth Century,” 43–50; Cresswell, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774–77, 271, 80.

24.   Boorstin, The Americans, 276, 284–89.

25.   Willis on Everett, Pencillings by the Way, 395; Emerson, Selected Lectures, 104; Everett to Lincoln, November 20, 1863, in James W. Matthews, “Fallen Angel.”

26.   Everett, “Mr. Walsh’s Appeal,” North American Review 10 (1820): 363–64, and “England and America,” North American Review 13 (1821): 35, both cited in Mencken, The American Language, 4th ed., chap. 1, sec. 6, “The Views of Writing Men,” 67–68.

27.   Edward Everett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Ms. N-1201. Everett on American and British spoken and written English: letter to Pickering, April 12, 1817, in the John Pickering correspondence; Everett Ms. Journal, May 20, 1818 (microfilm reel 35), vol. 131; Everett to Pickering August 14, 1818, in Pickering correspondence; Everett, untitled article, North American Review 10 (April 1820): 207. See Allen Walker Read, “Edward Everett’s Attitude towards American English,” 112–29, where these Everett passages are cited; see also Long, Literary Pioneers.

28.   Ticknor, Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, ed. Hillard et al., 1:58; White, England without and Within, 366 (“my tribe”); Frederick Marryat, A Diary in America, 2:222 (“drawl”); Literary Gazette, published in London by H. Colburn (2nd ed., 1818–36), 456–57. See also Paul K. Longmore, “ ‘They . . . Speak Better English Than the English Do.’ ”

29.   Cooper, Notions of the Americans, 2:122–36, 161ff.; Cooper, Satanstoe; or, The Littlepage Manuscripts, chap. 14; Cooper, The American Democrat, ed. Dekker and Johnston, 167–72.

30.   Andrew Lang, “Americanisms,” Academy, March 2, 1895, 193.

31.   John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (1890), 4:75 (cited by Read in “Amphi-Atlantic English,” 64–65); Mencken, The American Language (1919 ed.), 23 (“last drops”). See also Simpson, The Politics of American English, 1776–1850, 151–53, 183–84.

32.   Gentleman’s Magazine 57, pt. 2 (November 1787): 978.

Chapter 2

1.     Noah Webster, Dissertations on the English Language, with an appendix, “An Essay on the Necessity, Advantages and Practicability of Reforming the Mode of Spelling, and of Rendering the Orthography of Words Correspondent to the Pronunciation,” 20, 398, 406.

2.     John Adams, “On Education,” in The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles F. Adams, 9:510.

3.     Brackenridge, Modern Chivalry, Containing the Adventures of Captain Farrago and Teague O’Regan, 1:xv; Ladd, The Literary Remains of Joseph Brown Ladd, M.D., 186; Webster, Dissertations on the English Language, 171.

4.     Jefferson to Madison, August 12, 1801, cited by Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 272.

5.     See Taylor, Writing Early American History, chap. 10, on Jill Lepore’s book, A Is for American, which cites Pickering’s description of Webster here (58) and others in her The Story of America, chap. 7, “A Nue Merrykin Dikshunary,” 111–29; and her New Yorker article, “Noah’s Mark,” 78–87.

6.     Ford Notes, 1:10–11.

7.     Webster, Instructive and Entertaining Lessons for Youth, chap. 64 (Dwight quoted on 197).

8.     Buckminster to Webster, October 30, 1779, fragment, Noah Webster Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, box 2 (Ford Notes, 1:20–21). For Webster at Yale, see Ford Notes, 1:11–21; and Memoirs Nos. 4 and 5, in Rollins, The Autobiographies of Noah Webster, 123–33.

9.     Memoir No. 5, in Rollins, Autobiographies, 133–34; letter to Thomas Dawes, December 20, 1808, Webster Letters, p. 310.

10.   Memoir No. 6, in Rollins, Autobiographies, 134–36; Ford Notes, 1:23; Collections of the Huguenot Society of America 1 (1886): lxvii, 60.

11.   Memoirs Nos. 7 and 8, in Rollins, Autobiographies, 136–37; Barlow to Webster, August 1782, Ford Notes, 1:30 (cited from Todd, Life and Letters of Joel Barlow, LL.D., 42).

12.   Webster, Introduction to “Blue-Back Speller,” in Rollins, Autobiographies, 70–71. The best study of the speller is by E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage: Noah Webster’s Blue-Back Speller.

13.   Webster, The American Spelling Book, lesson 5, p. 19.

14.   Webster cited by Horace E. Scudder, Noah Webster, 20–21; Webster, A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings, 96.

15.   For background on British and American grammar schoolbooks, see Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence, 31–34, 74–77; and Schweiger, “A Social History of English Grammar in the Early United States.” Cmiel mentions several other American grammars that had their day in the sun in the first half of the nineteenth century.

16.   Kirkman, English Grammar in Familiar Lessons, lecture 1, p. 13. See Schweiger, “A Social History of English Grammar,” 533.

17.   Lindley Murray has been the subject of a book-length study by Charles Monaghan, The Murrays of Murray Hill.

18.   Webster, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, pt. 1, p. 14 (included in Rollins, Autobiographies, 69–79).

19.   Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (no. 78), 4:369–71. For some additional legal background on the American search for copyright, see Buinicki, Negotiating Copyright; and Bracha, “The Ideology of Authorship Revisited.”

20.   Webster, “To the General Assembly of Connecticut,” Webster Letters, 1–3; Memoir No. 8, in Rollins, Autobiographies, 137; William Stanhope Smith to Webster, September 27, 1782, cited in Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 56, 58–59. See also Pelanda, “Declarations of Cultural Independence.”

21.   Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, chap. 5, “Origin of the Copy-Right Laws in the United States,” 74–80; Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 58.

22.   See “Memorial to the Legislature of New York” and Webster to John Canfield, January 6, 1783, Webster Letters, 5–7 and 4.

23.   Webster, American Selection of Lessons of Reading and Speaking . . . Being the Third Part of A GRAMMATICAL INSTITUTE of the English Language” (New York, 1802), preface; Webster to Timothy Pickering, October 28, 1785, Webster Letters, 39. See Cmiel Democratic Eloquence, chap. 1, “The Best Speech of the Best Soul,” 31–49, to which I am indebted for some of this discussion of British and American grammar and rhetoric.

24.   Webster, “Essay on the Necessity . . . ,” Grammatical Institute (1783), pt. 1, pp. 393–98. See also Mencken, The American Language, chap. 8, “The Influence of Webster.”

25.   E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage, 31–33.

26.   See Rollins, The Long Journey of Noah Webster, 50–53, on Webster’s months in Philadelphia.

27.   Webster to Rebecca Greenleaf, January 27 and February 10, 1788, Webster Letters, pp. 73–74, 76.

28.   Pickering to his nephew John Gardner, July 4, 1786, in The Life of Timothy Pickering by his son Octavius Pickering, 1:535; Hazard to Belknap, March 5, 1788, Correspondence between Jeremy Belknap and Ebenezer Hazard, vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 23.

29.   See Rollins, The Long Journey of Noah Webster, 58–60, for Webster’s mental state when he returned to Hartford.

30.   Webster, Dissertations on the English Language, appendix (406); preface (ix).

31.   Webster, Dissertations, 25, 26, 28, 171, 179.

32.   Webster, A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings, ix–xi.

33.   Cobbett on Webster, cited in Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 224. For a selection of Webster’s writing in the Minerva, see Rollins, The Long Journey of Noah Webster, 76–83; also Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 223–41.

34.   Webster, American Minerva, July 12, 1797.

35.   Ford Notes, 1:479; Webster, “Revolution in France” (1794), reprinted in A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects, 35.

36.   Bynack, “Noah Webster’s Linguistic Thought and the Idea of a National Culture,” 102–4. Among German linguistic philosophers, Webster appears to have been influenced chiefly by Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertius, Johann David Michaelis, and Johann Gottfried Herder. Herder’s essay “On the Origin of Language” was particularly influential, with its focus on the role that national rather than universal factors play in the evolution of language. See Vincent P. Bynack, “Noah Webster’s Linguistic Thought and the Idea of a National Culture,” 104–7.

Chapter 3

1.     Webster to Dennie, September 30, 1796, Webster Letters, 141–42.

2.     Webster, preface to An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York, 1828); Rollins, The Journey of Noah Webster, 95.

3.     Lepore, The Story of America, 111–12.

4.     “To the Governors, Instructors, and Trustees of the Universities, and Other Seminaries of Learning, in the United States,” January 1798, Webster Letters, 173–77.

5.     “A Letter to Dr. Ramsay, of Charleston, S.C., Respecting the Errors in Johnson’s Dictionary, and Other Lexicons,” October 1807, Webster Letters, 282–92. See also Webster to Dawes, August 5, 1809, Webster Letters, 330. See also Lynch, The Lexicographer’s Dilemma.

6.     Webster to Timothy Pickering, July 17, 1798, Webster Letters, 183–84; Connecticut Herald, June 4, 1800.

7.     Warren Dutton, articles in the New England Palladium, October 2 and November 6, 1801, cited in Wells, Dictionaries and the Authoritarian Tradition, 64–65, and Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 293–97.

8.     Webster, “To the New England Palladium,” November 10, 1801, Webster Letters, 246.

9.     The Philadelphia Aurora (1800), quoted by E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage, 119; Portfolio, November 28, 1801, quoted in Andresen, Linguistics in America 1769–1924, 67; and see Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 291–94 for other pertinent citations.

10.   Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 4:102–8. See Allen Walker Read, “Dictionaries,” The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007 ed. The first version of this article was published in the 15th edition (1974), 5:713–22. Passages cited here are from both editions. See Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 133, on the pre-Webster American dictionaries; and Percy, “Political Perspectives on Linguistic Innovation,” 43, 45 (from which I have borrowed examples).

11.   Joshua Kendall discusses Johnson Jr.’s and John Elliott’s dictionaries in The Forgotten Founding Father, 229–31. There is a quaint article on Samuel Johnson Jr. of New Haven, Connecticut, in the Connecticut Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly (Hartford, CT) 5 (December 1899), in which Webster’s letter is quoted. I am not aware that any evidence has turned up of a meeting between this Johnson and Webster.

12.   Webster to Carey and John West, June 14 and August 18, 1805, Webster Letters, 262–64.

13.   See the following studies on Webster’s early lexicography: Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 124–32; Friend, The Development of American Lexicography, 1798–1864, 14–24; Sidney Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 59–64; Green, Chasing the Sun, 256–59; and Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 142–49.

14.   Preface, Compendious Dictionary, section on orthography, vi–x.

15.   See Krapp, The English Language in America, 1:341–43. I have drawn several of my spelling examples from these pages.

16.   Webster to John Pickering, December 1816, Webster Letters, 372–73; Krapp, The English Language in America, 1:332–33.

17.   Preface, Compendious Dictionary, xi, xiv.

18.   Letters from Quincy, Dawes, and Adams, June 30, August 14, and November 5, 1806, Ford Notes, 2:6, 8–9, 9–12.

19.   Webster to Barlow, November 12, 1807, Webster Letters, 299; Monthly Anthology and Boston Review 7 (1809): 247–64.

20.   Webster to Samuel Latham Mitchill, June 15, 1807, Webster Letters, 276.

Chapter 4

1.     Webster to Barlow, November 12, 1807, Webster Letters, 294–300.

2.     Dawes to Webster, August 5, 1807, Noah Webster Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library (bracketed phrase is in the original); Krapp, The English Language in America, 2:365. Webster described at length his religious conversion in a letter to Dawes, December 20, 1808, Webster Letters, 309–15.

3.     Webster to Ramsay, October 1807, Webster Letters, 282, 291, 286, 287; Webster to Dawes, August 5, 1807, Webster Letters, 330; Madison to Webster, May 31, 1813, Ford Notes, 2:119–20; John Jay to Webster, May 31, 1813, Ford Notes, 2:120.

4.     Dawes to Webster, January 12, 1811, Ford Notes, 2:82; Wolcott to Webster, September 19, 1807, Ford Notes, 2:26–27; “To the Friends of Literature in the United States,” February 25, 1807, Webster Letters, 279–81; Noah Webster Sr. to Webster, June 9, 1807, Ford Notes, 2:20; Webster to Madison, February 20, 1809, Webster Letters, 315.

5.     Webster to Dawes, July 25, 1809, Ford Notes, 2:323.

6.     Webster to Quincy, February 12, 1811, Ford Notes, 2:102.

7.     Eliza Webster reminiscence, Ford Notes, 2:116.

8.     Webster to Jay, June 9, 1813, Ford Notes, 2:121. See also Webster to Quincy, February 12, 1811, Ford Notes, 2:102.

9.     On Jones, Schlegel, Bopp, and the Grimm brothers, see Béjoint, The Lexicography of English, 97; and Green, Chasing the Sun, 277–85.

10.   Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1841), introduction, xx; Jones, The Works of Sir William Jones, 3:199–200; Webster, Observations on Language, Addressed to the Members of the Mercantile Library Association, 5–6. See also Read, “The Spread of German Linguistic Learning in New England during the Lifetime of Noah Webster.” For Webster’s etymological principle of radicals and roots, see Krapp, The English Language in America, 1:363–65. On Webster’s etymology, see also Laird, “Etymology, Anglo-Saxon, and Noah Webster”; and Bivens, “Noah Webster’s Etymological Principles.”

11.   Sledd and Kolb, Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, 183; Webster, Dissertations on the English Language, 287; Butler, John Horne Tooke, Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy, 18–19. See also Simpson, The Politics of American English, 1776–1850, 81–90.

12.   Pickering to Horace Binney, July 1816, cited in Mary Orne Pickering, Life of John Pickering, 258–60.

13.   Webster’s attack in his Letter to Pickering, December 1816, is included in Webster Letters, 341–94; citations are listed here in the order they appear: 367, 383, 382, 372, 367.

14.   Webster, Letter to the Honorable John Pickering, in Webster Letters, 382, 393, 394. On Pickering, see also Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 84–94; and Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 172–73.

15.   Webster to Stephen Van Rensselaer, November 5, 1821, Webster Letters, 405–6.

16.   Ford Notes, appendix 32, 506.

17.   From Dawes (February 14, 1824) and Cranch (March 1, 1824) to Webster, cited in Ford Notes, 2:195, 196.

18.   Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime, 2:18–19.

19.   William Webster to Rebecca Webster, September 24, 1824, Ford Notes, 2:246–47.

20.   Ford Notes, 2:292n1; Webster to Samuel Lee, December 20, 1824, Webster Letters, 413, cited by Webster himself in the preface to his 1828 American Dictionary; Webster to Rebecca Webster, December 6, 1824, Ford Notes, 2:267.

21.   Webster to Rebecca, December 26, 1824, Ford Notes, 2:275.

22.   Ford Notes, 2:293; Webster to Madison, March 17, 1826, Ford Notes, 2:294–95.

23.   Report of the Case of Joshua Stowe vs. Sherman Converse, for a Libel . . . (County of New Haven: S. Converse, 1822), 13.

24.   Converse to Jefferson, February 6, 1826, and Jefferson to Converse, February 20, 1826, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, series 1, General Correspondence, 1751–1827 (cited in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 194, 195).

25.   Julius H. Ward, The Life and Letters of James Gates Percival, 80, 36, 80. Eulogies of Percival in 1856, ed. Draper, were published in Collections of the Historical Society of Wisconsin 3 (1904): 66–80.

26.   Webster to Daniel Webster, September 30, 1826, Webster Letters, 417–20; Noah Webster to William Chauncey Fowler, January 29, 1831, Webster Letters, 424–25. For an account of Webster’s new copyright initiatives, I am indebted to Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 211–21.

27.   Ward, The Life and Letters of James Gates Percival, 475.

28.   Ward, The Life and Letters of James Gates Percival, 286–87, 475.

29.   Ward, The Life and Letters of James Gates Percival, 286.

30.   Webster to Converse, May 23, 1828. Nate D. Sanders, Inc., in Los Angeles put up Webster’s letter to Converse for auction in 2010, but it remains a mystery who purchased it and where it is now.

31.   American Quarterly Review 4 (1828): 204; letter to editor, Albany Argus, December 1827, Webster Letters, 422; Richardson, “An American Dictionary of the English Language,” 82; Green, Chasing the Sun, 264.

32.   Everett to Webster, June 19, 1827, Noah Webster Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, cited by Read, “Edward Everett’s Attitude towards American English,” 124–27; Everett, review in the North American Review 29 (October 1829): 536.

33.   Samuel Johnson, Rambler, no. 51, September 7, 1751. A full and most carefully researched examination (much of it among archives in the New York Public Library) of the 1828 edition is by Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 171–98. See also Friend, The Development of American Lexicography, 1798–1864, chap. 2; Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 153–60; Krapp, The English Language in America, 1:362–69; and Scudder, Noah Webster, 82–93.

34.   Webster, preface to 1828 quarto, viii. Miyoshi has interesting things to say about the American character of the 1828 edition in Johnson and Webster’s Verbal Examples, 60.

35.   Sledd and Kolb, Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, 155, 191–92, quote Richardson’s “original prospectus” from “The Address to the Public, from the American Publisher,” p. 2 (“elders of English lexicography”); Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 153 (“oriental readings), quotes from Richardson in the Westminster Review (1828); Webster, Mistakes and Corrections (1837). On Horne Tooke’s influence on Webster, see Simpson, The Politics of American English, 81–90.

36.   For a quick assessment of Webster’s influence on American spelling, see Conrad T. Logan, “Noah Webster’s Influence on American Spelling”; and Percy, “Plane English; or, The Orthography of Opposition in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain.”

37.   Murray, “The Evolution of English Lexicography,” the Romanes Lecture, delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, June 22, 1900, cited by Krapp, The English Language in America, 1:367.

38.   Joseph W. Reed, “Noah Webster’s Debt to Samuel Johnson,” American Speech, vol. 37 (May 1962), 95–105.

39.   Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 188. See Cynthia L. Hallen and Tracy B. Spackman, “Biblical Citations as a Stylistic Standard in Johnson’s and Webster’s Dictionaries, Lexis, vol. 5 (2010). See also Reed, “Noah Webster’s Debt to Samuel Johnson.”

40.   Kent, “Anniversary Address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society Chapter of Connecticut,” 2.

41.   Richard Garnett, “English Lexicography,” Quarterly Review 54 (July–September 1835): 304–5 (later published in The Philological Essays of the Late Rev. Richard Garnett); Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 276.

Chapter 5

1.     Jefferson to Yancey, January 6, 1816, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, 19:328. For a historical account of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century magazines, see Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines: 1741–1850, vol. 1.

2.     See Grubb, “Growth of Literacy in Colonial America”; and Columbian Phenix and the Boston Review, both cited by Jack Lynch in his essay, “Every Man Able to Read: Literacy in Early America.” On the factors responsible for the increase in literacy, see Stevens Jr., “Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century United States.”

3.     Webster to Converse, May 23, 1828 (see Collectible Auctions, http://icollector.com, for the letter put up by Nate D. Sanders, Inc.); Converse to Goodrich, November 11, 1830, GFP, box 1, folder 9.

4.     Webster to Howe, Kinglsey, and Woodward, December 8, 1829, and Converse to Good-rich, November 11, 1830, GFP, box 1, folder 9.

5.     Phillips Bulletin 19 (July 8, 1918). For a sketch of Worcester’s years in Salem, Massachusetts, see Margaret B. Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 79–84.

6.     Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne, chap. 4, “A Salem Education.”

7.     See Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, chap. 1.

8.     Newell, “Memoir of J. E. Worcester, LL.D.”; Higginson, Old Cambridge, 51–52. On Higginson’s friendship with Dickinson, see Wineapple, White Heat; and Cristanne Miller on Webster’s influence on Dickinson, in Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar (reprinted as a chapter in Farr, ed., New Century Views of Emily Dickinson; and in Miller, Reading in Time).

9.     American Monthly Review 1 (January–June 1832): 95–96.

10.   Worcester edition of Todd-Johnson (London, 1827), preface, ix–x.

11.   Webster to William Fowler, September 29, 1830, Webster Letter-Book.

12.   Converse’s much later account is taken from Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, Relating to the Publication of Worcester’s Dictionary, 13.

13.   Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, Relating to the Publication of Worcester’s Dictionary, 13.

14.   Woolsey, “A Discourse in Commemoration of the Life and Service of Chauncey Allen Goodrich.”

15.   Webster to Worcester, July 27, 1828, Webster Letter-Book; Goodrich to Worcester, July 28, 1828, GFP, box 1, folder 7. Both references are included in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, Relating to the Publication of Worcester’s Dictionary, 13.

16.   An American Dictionary of the English Language (revised octavo, 3rd ed., 1830), preface, iii.

17.   “Webster’s Octavo Dictionary,” Methodist Quarterly Review 30 (January 1848): 106 (quoted by Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence, 88; see also 84–85); Woolsey, “A Discourse in Commemoration of the Life and Service of Chauncey Allen Goodrich,” 22–23.

18.   Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, Relating to the Publication of Worcester’s Dictionary, 13.

19.   Goodrich to George and Charles Merriam, October 27, 1853, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 127.

20.   Worcester to Goodrich, October 28, 1828, GFP, box 1, folder 7.

21.   Worcester to Goodrich, October 28 and 31, 1828, GFP, box 1, folder 7.

22.   Worcester to Goodrich, December 9, 1828, GFP, box 1, folder 7; preface, 1830 octavo abridgment of the quarto, iii.

23.   On Worcester’s methods in the revisions, see Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 174–75; and on aspects of Goodrich’s strategy, see Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 201–2.

24.   Worcester to Goodrich, April 9, 1829, GFP, box 1, folder 8.

Chapter 6

1.     Webster to Fowler, April 11, 1843, Webster Letter-Book.

2.     Converse to Webster, May 20, 1828, Ellsworth Letters, CHS. See also E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage, 140–41, on the rift between Webster and Converse.

3.     A Dictionary of the English Language, for the Use of Primary Schools and the Counting-House (1829), ii.

4.     Webster to Fowler, December 28, 1829, Webster Letter-Book.

5.     Webster to Fowler, December 28, 1829, Webster Letter-Book; Goodrich to Fowler, April 11, 1843, Webster Letter-Book; and Fowler’s recollections, Printed, but Not Published, 6–7.

6.     Goodrich to Ellsworth, October 18, 1843, GFP, box 2, folder 17.

7.     Webster affidavit, May 7, 1833, GFP, box 1, folder 11.

8.     Webster signed his second agreement on July 12, 1833 (GFP, box 1, folder 11).

9.     Webster to J. L. Kingsley, Hezekiah Howe, and Thomas G. Woodward, December 28, 1829, GFP, box 1, folder 9; to Fowler, September 29, 1830, Webster Letter-Book; to Rebecca Webster, January 26, 1831, Ford Notes, 2:324.

10.   Converse to Goodrich, November 11, 1830, GFP, box 1, folder 9.

11.   Goodrich to Ellsworth, October 18, 1843, GFP, box 2, folder 17; Goodrich to the Merriams, December 19, 1844, Merriam Papers, box 19, folder 119.

12.   Goodrich to Converse, May 29, 1833, GFP, box 1, folder 11.

Chapter 7

1.     The most exhaustive study on Lyman Cobb and the spelling wars, on which this chapter draws heavily, is by Charles Monaghan, “Lyman Cobb and the British Elocutionary Tradition.” I am indebted to him for background information on Cobb that he has shared with me. On spellers, see E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage, 31–34.

2.     E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage, 152–57.

3.     Cobb, To the Teachers, School Committees or Inspectors, Clergymen, and to the Friends of Correct Elementary Instruction. Reprinted in Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 165–66.

4.     “To the Editor of the Albany Argus,” December 1827, Webster Letters, 421–23.

5.     New York Evening Post, June 27, 1829; Cobb’s lists in the July 4, 1829, Morning Herald are summarized by Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 167–73, from which I have taken examples.

6.     Barnes is cited by Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 169–70; and Read, “The Development of Faith in the Dictionary in America,” 7.

7.     Cobb cites Converse’s involvement in this dispute in his Critical Review of the Orthography of Dr. Webster’s Series of Books for Systematick Instruction in the English Language Including His Former Spelling-Book and the Elementary Spelling-Book, iii note. See Charles Monaghan, “Lyman Cobb and the British Elocutionary Tradition”; and Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 170–71, on the Cobb-Converse squabble.

8.     Cobb, A Critical Review.

9.     Webster, “To the Public,” November 15, 1831, Webster Letters, 428–31.

10.   Webster’s letter to Henrick has been for sale by the New York City bookseller James Cummings, inventory no. 26005. Its present location is unknown.

11.   Webster to McGuffey, March 3, 1837, Merriam Papers, box 14, folder 311. It is cited by Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 222.

12.   Webster to Harriet Fowler, December 29, 1830, Webster Letter-Book.

13.   Webster to Fowler, January 29, 1831,Webster Letters, 425; the self-advertisement is cited later in the 1839 edition, The Elementary Spelling Book, Being an Improvement of the American Spelling Book, advertisement, 4.

14.   Harte, The Works of Bret Harte, Argonaut ed., vol. 8.

Chapter 8

1.     Dunglison, American Monthly Review 1 (1832): 101–2; “Words Often Mispronounced,” Common School Journal 1 (1839): 361; Webster to Fowler, November 24, 1830, Webster Letter-Book.

2.     Webster to Fowler, April 20, 1831, Webster Letter-Book. For a detailed account of Worcester’s Comprehensive Dictionary, see Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 18–25. Higgins’s book is a close study of how Worcester navigated through these tempestuous lexicographical waters. See also Burkett, Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 203–7.

3.     Webster to Fowler, April 20, 1831, Webster Letter-Book; Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 20–23; Worcester, A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language (Boston, 1830), xiii.

4.     The word was coined by John Algeo, “Dictionaries as Seen by the Educated Public in Great Britain and the U.S.A.,” 1:29.

5.     Mugglestone, Lost for Words, xvi; McArthur, Living Words, 91. See also Béjoint, The Lexicography of English, 232.

6.     Webster to Fowler, November 24, 1830, Webster Letter-Book. See also Joseph W. Reed, “Webster’s Debt to Samuel Johnson.”

7.     Webster to Fowler, April 20, 1831, Webster Letter-Book.

8.     Worcester Palladium, November 26, 1834; Burkett, Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 223.

9.     Worcester Palladium, November 26, 1834.

10.   Johnson’s remark is in Rambler, no. 68, quoted in Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 35.

11.   Willard, North American Review 64 (1817): 190. Worcester’s remark on Willard’s defense is quoted by Swan, “Worcester’s Dictionaries,” 10.

12.   Worcester, Worcester Palladium, December 10, 1834. Worcester had been collecting dictionary editions for many years and continued to do so on his trip to Europe in 1831, where he bought many philological works.

13.   Webster, Worcester Palladium, December 17, 1834.

14.   Worcester Palladium, December 24, 1834.

15.   Worcester, Worcester Palladium, February 6, 1835.

16.   Webster, Worcester Palladium, February 13, 1835.

17.   Worcester, Worcester Palladium, March 11, 1835.

18.   Webster, Worcester Palladium, March 14, 1835. See Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 231–33, and Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 36–41.

19.   Prior, A Life of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 191.

20.   Worcester, Elementary Dictionary for the Common Schools with Pronouncing Vocabularies of Classical, Scripture, and Modern Geographical Names (Boston, 1835), preface, 3.

21.   Longfellow, “Craigie House,” 23–26 (handwritten booklet, Craigie-Longfellow House, Cambridge, MA); Longfellow, “Dame Craigie,” in Higginson, Outdoor Studies Poems, 355–56. For a history of the house, see Catherine Evans, Cultural Landscape Report for Longfellow National Historic Site, vol. 1 (Boston: National Park Service, 1993); and New England Historical and Genealogical Register 25 (July 1871): 237–38. I am grateful to Anita Israel, archives specialist at the house, for her help with the history of the Craigie house.

22.   Longfellow to Stephen Longfellow, April 1, 1841, The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Long-fellow, ed. Hilen, 293–94.

23.   Tharp, The Appletons of Beacon Hill, 244.

Chapter 9

1.     Webster to Harriet Fowler, November 5, 1835, Webster Letter-Book; Ford Notes, 1:375–76 (for the family friend [from an article on Noah Webster in Mother’s Magazine by Mrs. Whitlesey, one of the Goodrich family, which was knit to him by friendship for years, and later by marriage] and for Webster’s statement); Joshua Kendall, “Noah Webster: The Definition of Yankee Know-How,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2008.

2.     Webster to Fowler, August 31, 1835, Webster Letter-Book; Webster to Fowler, September 10, 1836, “Reasons for Adopting One Dictionary as a Standard of English Orthography, September 1836,” Webster Letter-Book.

3.     Webster to Dawes, August 5, 1809, Webster Letters, 330. On attitudes toward Johnson’s style, see Ley, The Critic in the Modern World, 21–23.

4.     “Reasons for Adopting One Dictionary as a Standard of English Orthography, September 1836,” Webster Letter-Book.

5.     The Panoplist; Or, the Christian’s Armory 3, no. 3 (August 1807): 125; Elisa Tamarkin, Anglophilia, 290–92. Everett is cited in Andresen, Linguistics in America, 1769–1924. See also Lynch, The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, for a comprehensive study of this tangled subject of prescriptiveness.

6.     Webster to Fowler, July 9, 1836, Webster Letter-Book,

7.     Webster to Fowler, July 9, 1836, December 8, 1837, January 9, 1838, March 10, 1838, Webster Letter-Book.

8.     White to Goodrich, September 11, 1837, GFP, box 2, folder 14.

9.     Webster to Fowler, February 27 and March 14, 1839, Webster Letter-Book.

10.   Webster to Fowler, July 4, 1839, Webster Letter-Book.

11.   Webster to Fowler, February 25, 1841, Webster Letter-Book.

12.   Webster to Fowler, July 9, 1840, Webster Letter-Book.

13.   See Mencken, “The Influence of Webster,” The American Language (1937 ed.), 379–88, for several examples of Webster’s orthographical retrenchment that I have cited.

14.   Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1841), appendix, 941–1008.

15.   Webster to Fowler, July 7 and December 3, 1841, Webster Letter-Book. See Green, Chasing the Sun, 329. Fowler recorded his last conversation with Webster in his pamphlet, Printed, but Not Published. See Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 179–80, for additional details regarding the 1841 royal octavo.

16.   “Account by Eliza Webster Jones ‘For my Little Boy,’ ” in Ford Notes, 2:362–371.

17.   Unger, Noah Webster: The Life and Times of An American Patriot, 338–40; Silliman is cited in Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 436–37.

Chapter 10

1.     Harriet Fowler to Noah Webster, February 13, 1837, Noah Webster Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, box 6.

2.     Goodrich to Ellsworth, October 18, 1843, GFP, box 2, folder 17.

3.     Webster to William Webster, November 9, 1835, Noah Webster Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, box 1.

4.     Ellsworth to William Webster, July 6, 1843, cited in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 258. Micklethwait, a London lawyer, has unraveled the legal contractual complexity involving the Webster family and the several Webster editions, 256–71.

5.     Ellsworth to William Webster, December 10, 1844, cited in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 263; Ellsworth to J. S. and C. Adams, May 21, 1845, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 95.

6.     Ellsworth to Merriams, March 4, 1844, GFP, box 2, folder 17.

7.     Merriams to Ellsworth, December 3, 1847, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 122. For histories of the G. & C. Merriam Company, see Leavitt, Noah’s Ark, New England Yankees and The Endless Quest, 41–53; and Leavitt, 100th Anniversary of the Establishment of the G. and C. Merriam Company, 1831–1931.

8.     Goodrich to Fowler, January 16, 1854, GFP, box 3, folder 28.

9.     Goodrich to Ellsworth, January 1844, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 119; and Goodrich to Ellsworth, January 20 and 21, 1845, GFP, box 2, folder 18.

10.   Goodrich to Merriams, December 19, 1844, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 119; Merriams to Goodrich, December 26, 1844, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 119.

11.   Goodrich to Merriams, December 19, 1844, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 119

12.   Goodrich to Merriams, December 19, 1844, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 119.

13.   Goodrich contract with the Merriams, January 30, 1845, GFP, box 2, folder 18.

14.   Webster to William Webster, July 7, 1836, cited by Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 241; Fowler, Printed, but Not Published, cited by Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 242.

15.   Huntington also owned the publishing rights to the High School, Primary, and Pocket school dictionaries.

16.   Warfel, Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, 418; Fowler, Printed, but Not Published, quoted in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 265–66.

17.   Goodrich diary, October 1845, GFP, box 8, folder 90.

18.   Fowler, Printed, but Not Published, quoted in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 242.

19.   Fowler, Printed, but Not Published, quoted in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 264. Goodrich to Fowler, January 16, 1854, GFP, box 3, folder 28. Goodrich’s January 1854 letter to Fowler was precipitated by a sour letter of Fowler’s to Goodrich in January 1854 (GFP, box 3, folder 29) in which he told Goodrich that years earlier he had received deep injuries from him and that the latter had never repaired their personal relations, but that if Goodrich were to agree to new financial agreements in the family, he would take that as a movement toward improving their relationship. Goodrich replied promptly that it was he who had been injured, not Fowler. Fowler’s recollections are extensively quoted in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 264–66.

20.   Ellsworth to Goodrich, January 14, 1845, GFP, box 2, folder 18; Goodrich to Ellsworth, February 6, 1845, GFP, box 2, folder 18. See Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 182–86, for details of the innovations in the 1847 edition.

21.   Goodrich to Merriams, June 9, 1845, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 120.

22.   Goodrich to Merriams, September 1845, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 120.

23.   Goodrich to Fowler, GFP, box 3, folder 28.

24.   Fowler cited in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 266; Goodrich to Fowler, January 16, 1854, GFP, box 3, folder 28.

25.   Goodrich to Fowler, January 16, 1854, GFP, box 3, folder 28; Fowler to Goodrich, January 18, 1854, GFP, box 3, folder 28; Goodrich to Fowler, January 1854, GFP, box 3, folder 28.

26.   Ellsworth to William Webster, February 1847, GFP, box 3, folder 28. See Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 268–69 on Fowler’s last gasps of protest.

Chapter 11

1.     Charles Merriam, “Recollections of Various Particulars in the History of Webster’s Dictionaries,” 1883, Merriam Papers, box 101, folder 696.

2.     Charles Merriam to Ellsworth, March 2, 1846, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 98.

3.     Charles Merriam to Ellsworth, March 2, 1846, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 98.

4.     Charles Merriam to Ellsworth, March 2, 1846, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 98; Goodrich to Merriams, June 9, 1845, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 120.

5.     Charles Merriam to Ellsworth, March 2, 1846, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 98.

6.     Worcester, A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Wilkens, Carter and Co., 1846), iv–v; Charles Merriam, “Recollections,” Merriam Papers, box 101, folder 696.

7.     On the transformation of the English language in the nineteenth century, see a fascinating book by Richard W. Bailey, Nineteenth-Century English; also Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence.

8.     North American Review 64 (1847): 194–95.

9.     Worcester, A Universal and Critical Dictionary, v, lxv; North American Review 64, no. 134 (January 1847): 191 (for “judicious moderation”).

10.   Worcester, A Universal and Critical Dictionary, xxil, lxv; Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence, 88. For a detailed description of Worcester’s dictionary, see Joseph Harold Friend, The Development of American Lexicography 1798–1864, 90–95.

11.   Worcester, A Universal and Critical Dictionary, iii–v.

12.   Worcester, A Universal and Critical Dictionary, v–vi.

13.   Worcester, A Universal and Critical Dictionary, iv.

14.   Merriams to William Webster, September 15, 1846, GFP, box 1, folder 20.

15.   Worcester, A Universal and Critical Dictionary, 512.

16.   Noah Porter, review of Worcester’s A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language, American Review 5 (May 1847): 508–13.

17.   The American Dictionary of the English Language, ed. Chauncey Allen Goodrich (Springfield, MA: G. and C. Merriam, 1847), iii. See Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 176–77, for a summary of the characteristics of the 1847 royal octavo.

18.   The American Dictionary of the English Language, preface, v.

19.   The American Dictionary of the English Language, preface, iii–iv.

20.   The American Dictionary of the English Language, preface, vii.

21.   Goodrich, Morning Courier and New York Enquirer (1849); The American Dictionary of the English Language, preface, v–vi. On Webster’s role in determining much of American spelling, see Micklethwait’s summary, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 295 (Goodrich is cited here); Mencken, The American Language, 1937 ed., chap. 8, 379–88; and Logan, “Noah Webster’s Influence on American Spelling.”

22.   “Webster’s International Dictionary—Especially Its Pronunciation,” New Englander 53 (1890): 423, cited in Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 177.

23.   The memoir, which Webster himself wrote, appeared originally in 1834 in The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, ed. Longacre and Herring, 2:10; it appears in the 1847 Merriam edition with Goodrich’s additions on xv–xxii.

24.   Twain, Roughing It (1872), The Complete Works of Mark Twain (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1913), 5, 19, 20. See also Twain’s letter to the Merriam Company, March 1891, Merriam Papers, box 8, folder 70.

25.   Goodrich to Merriams, December 1, 1847, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 122; Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed (1853), 15.

26.   Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 16–17.

27.   Charles Merriam to Ellsworth, March 2, 1846, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 98.

Chapter 12

1.     Merriam, advertisement in the Boston Daily Advertiser, August 5, 1853, cited in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 5; Worcester to Wilkins, August 23, 1853, cited in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 6. For accounts of the London fraud and the subsequent turmoil that erupted, see Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 94–96; and Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 283–85.

2.     Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 284, surmises that Bohn’s motivation for the fraudulent edition could be traced to his frustrated desire to publish an edition of the Goodrich/Worcester abridgment. Since Goodrich had his own London publisher for the abridgment (Ingram, Cooke, and Co.), the next best thing for Bohn was to publish Worcester’s book in what looked like a pretty good facsimile of that abridgment, the same size but stamped “Webster’s Dictionary” in gold on the spine. That way he could pass it off as the abridgment and claim it had been made from Webster’s materials.

3.     Worcester to Wilkins, August 24, 1853, cited in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 7.

4.     Wilkins to Worcester, August 31, 1853, cited in A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 8–9.

5.     London Illustrated News, February 12, 1853.

6.     Lowndes, The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature.

7.     Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 283.

8.     Merriam, The English Dictionaries of Webster and Worcester; Worcester to Wilkins, August 23, 1853, cited in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 7; Worcester to Jenks, Hickling, and Swan, September 30, 1853, cited in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 3.

9.     For a good account of the publishers’ interaction with Worcester, see Leach, “A Stabilizing Influence,” 41–48. His summary sheds light on the Merriams’ aggressive strategy for capitalizing on the Bohn scandal.

10.   Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 10.

11.   Charles and George Merriam, The English Dictionaries of Webster and Worcester, 12; Charles and George Merriam, Worcester’s Dictionary Published in England under the Guise of Webster’s Dictionary, 3, 5. In order to take advantage of their marketing advantage in the western parts of the country, the Merriams decided to do their advertising there first and only later in New England.

12.   Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 11.

13.   Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 13.

14.   Worcester to Goodrich, October 26, 1853, cited in A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 25.

15.   Goodrich to Worcester, November 2, 1853, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 127.

16.   Worcester to Goodrich, November 21, 1853, cited in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 26.

17.   Merriam pamphlet, early December, A Gross Literary Forgery Exposed, 26; Worcester on the pamphlet, Worcester, A Gross Literary Forgery Exposed, 26.

18.   Worcester to Converse, December 13, 1853, and Converse to Worcester, December 19, 1853: Merriam and both of them cited in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 26–27.

19.   Merriams quoted in Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 14.

20.   Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 14–15, 28, 30.

21.   Worcester to Goodrich, January 31, 1854, appendix 2, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 30.

22.   Goodrich to Merriams, October 27, 1853, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 127; Goodrich to Merriams, November 4, 1853, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 127.

23.   Goodrich to Merriams, February 17, 1854, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 129. See Charles and George Merriam, Worcester’s Dictionary Published in England under the Guise of Webster’s Dictionary, 6.

24.   Goodrich to Merriams, February 4, 1854, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 129.

25.   Goodrich to Merriams, February 4, 1854, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 129.

26.   Goodrich to Merriams, March 31, 1854, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 129.

27.   Goodrich to Merriams, May 3, 1854, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 129; Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, “Postscript,” 34.

28.   Worcester to Goodrich, April 14, 1854, in A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, appendix 3, 31–33.

29.   Worcester, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, 34.

30.   In the preceding three years, Worcester had also come out with An Elementary Dictionary for Common Schools, with Pronouncing Vocabularies of Classical, Scripture, and Modern Geographical Names (1850) and his “little manual” A Primary Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (1851). Both sold well.

Chapter 13

1.     Sherman Converse to his son George, March 3, 1851 (found at a blog, Spared and Shared, belonging to “Griff,” who bought the letter at an unidentified auction, http://sparedshared4.wordpress.com/1851).

2.     Converse to Worcester, December 19, 1853, in A Gross Literary Forgery Exposed, appendix 3, 3–4. (Worcester tacked on Converse’s “Answer” at the end of appendix 3, with its own separate pagination.)

3.     A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, appendix 3, 33–34.

4.     Converse, “Answer,” 4–5.

5.     For an idea of the scale of public censure of Webster up through the publication of his Compendious Dictionary, see Cassedy, “ ‘A Dictionary Which We Do Not Want.’ ”

6.     Converse, “Answer,” 5–6.

7.     Converse, “Answer,” 6–7.

8.     Converse, “Answer,” 10.

9.     Converse, “Answer,” 10.

10.   Converse to Worcester, August 30, 1854, postscript to the “Answer,” A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, appendix 3, 11–12. Converse’s allusion to the Merriams’ “dark insinuations” is in “Answer,” 11.

11.   Converse to Worcester, August 30, 1854, postscript to the “Answer”, A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, appendix 3, 12.

12.   Converse to Goodrich, April 3, 1854, GFP, box 1, folder 29.

13.   Goodrich to the Merriams, May 3, 1854, Merriam Papers, Box 10, folder 129.

14.   G. and C. Merriam, A Summary of the Charges with Their Refutations in Attacks upon Noah Webster, LL.D., His Dictionaries, or His Publishers, Made by Mr. Joseph Worcester, Mr. Sherman Converse, and Messrs. Jenks, Hickling, and Swan (1854), 20. Converse to Worcester, August 30, 1854, “Answer,” 12.

Chapter 14

1.     Swan, A Reply to Messrs. G. and C. Merriam’s Attack on the Character of Dr. Worcester and His Dictionaries, 14.

2.     A vast amount of scholarship has been published on child development in America, but especially useful here has been Smith, Theories of Education in Early America, 1655–1819, chap. 13; and Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America.

3.     Swan, A Reply to Messrs. G. and C. Merriam’s Attack, 16–19, 25.

4.     These sales figures are drawn from tables prepared by Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 263–69; she compiled her figures from an appendix to the Merriams’ advertising volume, Have We a National Standard of Lexicography?, 17–20. The sales figures reported by seventy-four book dealers across the country from March to May 1854, the same year in which Swan published his pamphlet, was bad news for Worcester and his supporters. It showed that the overwhelming majority of sales were of Webster: 2,422 to 425 in New York City (a ratio of almost six-to-one); in Philadelphia, 123 to 4 (a ratio of thirty-to-one); in Chicago, 1,650 to zero (reported); in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 55 to 1.

5.     In his Reply to the Merriams in 1854, Swan cited their remark, “In the Empire State of New York, and at the West, Worcester is almost wholly unknown” (32).

6.     Charles Merriam to Goodrich, September 5, 1853, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 125. See Bhaskar, The Content Machine, 27.

7.     Charles Merriam to Goodrich, September 5, 1853, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 125.

8.     Charles Merriam to Goodrich, September 5, 1853, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 125.

9.     Charles Merriam to Goodrich, September 5, 1853, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 125.

10.   See Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence, 86–87.

11.   Swan, A Reply to Messrs. G. and C. Merriam’s Attack, 21; Swan cited Irving’s comment in this Reply, 30.

12.   Irving to Beekman, reprinted in A Reply to Messrs. G. and C. Merriam’s Attack, 30. See Kime, Pierre M. Irving and Washington Irving, 152.

13.   Daily Advertiser, July 29 and August 5, 1853 (cited in Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 228–29 and 229–31, respectively).

14.   Daily Advertiser, August 5, 1853.

15.   Beekman, cited in Swan, A Reply to Messrs. G. and C. Merriam’s Attack, 29–30.

16.   Swan, A Reply to Messrs. G. and C. Merriam’s Attack, 32.

17.   Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, 45.

18.   Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 145.

19.   Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 145; Holmes to Worcester, July 5, 1852, Massachusetts Historical Society, microfilm P-347, reel 52, p. 134.

20.   Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, 40–44.

21.   Holmes, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table (reprint, Boston, 1887), 9.

22.   Holmes, “To George Peabody,” in Parnassus, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton, Osgood, and Co., 1880).

Chapter 15

1.     Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2:296. For some of the information regarding newspapers, see “American Newspapers, 1800–1860: City Newspapers,” University of Illinois Library (Urbana-Champaign), video (2015).

2.     New York Times, April 15, 1868; Gould, Good English; “Mr. Beecher on Newspapers,” New York Tribune, May 19, 1879. Cmiel provides an excellent account of the social trends affecting language in mid-nineteenth-century America in Democratic Eloquence, chaps. 2 and 4.

3.     Reprinted in Swan, A Reply to Messrs. G. and C. Merriam’s Attack, 31.

4.     Worcester, “Introduction,” Universal and Critical Dictionary, lvii.

5.     G. and C. Merriam, Have We a National Standard of Lexicography?, 5–16; about this pamphlet, see Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 99–101, on which I have drawn. Friend has an account of the 1846 and 1860 Worcester editions in The Development of American Lexicography, 90–95, 95–103. I have referred to several examples mentioned in those pages.

6.     On Stowe and the Merriams’ defense of him, see Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 101–2.

7.     Boston Post, March 22, 1855.

8.     Poole, “Battle of the Dictionaries.” See also Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 245; and especially Higgins’s summary in A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 103ff. On the growth of mercantile libraries, see Augst, “The Business of Reading in Nineteenth-Century America.”

9.     G. and C. Merriam, A Summary Summing of the Charges, with Their Refutations; Glances at the Metropolis: A Hundred Illustrated Gems (New York, 1854), 1—printed as a foreword to Dictionaries in the Boston Mercantile Library and Boston Athenaeum, reprinted with that new title from the Mercantile Library Reporter. The Abigail Adams citation is taken from Jill Lepore, The Story of America, 132. See also Williamson, William Frederick Poole and the Modern Library Movement; and Poole, Dictionaries in the Boston Mercantile Library Association and Boston Athenaeum.

10.   Worcester, A Pronouncing, Explanatory and Synonymous Dictionary of the English Language, 3.

11.   Worcester, Pronouncing . . . Dictionary, 4.

12.   Worcester, Pronouncing . . . Dictionary, 4.

13.   Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 104, 105–6. Landau notes that synonym discriminations are more difficult to prepare than thesauruses, which is why they have not been as popular as the latter. Two important books on synonyms that followed Worcester’s in the late nineteenth century were Charles John Smith’s Synonyms Discriminated and James C. Fernald’s English Synonyms and Antonyms. Worcester’s new dictionary was published just two years before—and may even have influenced—Dean Richard Chevenix Trench’s game-changing call to the London Philological Society in 1857 for a dictionary (eventually named the Oxford English Dictionary) that paid far more attention than even Worcester’s to “the distinguishing of synonymous words.” For sales statistics of Worcester’s dictionary, see Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, vol. 1.

14.   Worcester, Pronouncing . . . Dictionary, 2, 23, 5. See also Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 105.

15.   Worcester, Pronouncing . . . Dictionary, 5.

16.   Worcester, Pronouncing . . . Dictionary, 21.

17.   Smart to Worcester, December 26, 1856 (letter headed, Athenaeum Club, Pall-Mall, London), Worcester Letters.

18.   Gould, Good English; or Popular Errors in Language; Swan, A Reply to Messrs. G. and C. Merriam’s Attack upon the Character of Dr. Worcester and His Dictionaries, 30–31.

19.   Gould, “A Review of Webster’s Orthography,” reprinted in Swan, Recommendations of Worcester’s Dictionaries; to which is Prefixed a Review of Webster’s System of Orthography from the United States Democratic Review, for March 1856, 2.

20.   Cobb to the Merriams, September 11 and 30, 1856, Merriam Papers, box 8, folder 72.

21.   Higgins provides the best detailed account of Gould’s attacks on Webster and Sargent’s counterattacks in A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 107–16. See also Swan, The Critic Criticized.

22.   Vanity Fair, March 24, 1860, 210; Old Guard 7 (November 1869): 876; Knickerbocker 60 (August 1862): 185; Bryant, New York Evening Post, March 22, 1856.

23.   Worcester to Samuel T. Worcester, January 24, May 1, and October 17, 1859, Worcester Letters.

24.   Goodrich to the Merriams, March 18, 1857, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 131.

25.   Goodrich to the Merriams, March 18, 1857, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 131.

26.   Goodrich to Charles Merriam, May 6, 1857, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 13.

27.   Charles Merriam to Goodrich, October 27, 1858, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 132.

Chapter 16

1.     Goodrich to William Webster, December 17, 1858, GFP, box 9, folder 34.

2.     Gould, “Webster’s Dictionary,” Home Journal (March 1859), cited in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 291–92 (also cited in Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 121–23). “Jonathan’s” letter in the Home Journal commending Gould’s article is cited by Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 293.

3.     Poole, Orthographical Hobgoblin, 5, 4.

4.     Poole, Orthographical Hobgoblin, 7–14.

5.     Atlantic Monthly (1859), cited by Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 250; Swan, A Comparison of Worcester’s and Webster’s Quarto Dictionaries, quoted by Burkett, 250; Charles Merriam, “Recollections,” Merriam Papers, box 1, folder 696; B. H. Smart, August 1860, and Herbert Coleridge August 7, 1860, in “The Rival Dictionaries,” New York Times, September 5, 1860.

6.     Bosworth to Worcester, March 27, 1860, Massachusetts Historical Society, microfilm P347, reel 55. For analyses of Worcester’s 1860 edition, see especially Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 123–30; Friend, The Development of American Lexicography 1798–1864, 95–102; and Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 212–18.

7.     Worcester, Dictionary of the English Language (1860), preface, 3; “Principles of Pronunciation,” xi–xxiv.

8.     New York Times, May 26, 1860, 9.

9.     New York Times, May 26, 1860, 9.

10.   North American Review 90, no. 187 (April 1860): 305, 565–66; Worcester, Dictionary of the English Language (1860), preface, vii.

11.   Holmes to Worcester, January 10, 1860, Massachusetts Historical Society, microfilm P347, reel 55, p. 524; Quincy to Worcester, cited in Newell, “Memoir of J. E. Worcester, LL.D.” Horace says of his own poetry, “I have reared (for myself) a monument (or memorial) more enduring than bronze.”

12.   Hawthorne to Worcester, April 14, 1861, Select Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Myerson, 236–37.

13.   Carlyle, Dickens, and Thackeray to Worcester, all cited in Newell, “Memoir of J. E. Worcester, LL.D.,” 173.

14.   Worcester to his brother Samuel, January 24 and 28, 1859, Worcester Letters.

15.   Worcester to Samuel T. Worcester, February 16 and June 26, 1862, Worcester Letters.

16.   For a detailed account of this new round of attacks and counterattacks following Worcester’s 1860 edition, see Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 132–44, on which I have drawn for portions of my own briefer account.

17.   Marsh, “The Two Dictionaries,” New York World, June 15, 1860.

18.   “Equal Justice” responded to Marsh in the New York World, September 1860; the article was reprinted by the Merriams in Two Dictionaries: or The Reviewer Reviewed and quoted by them, 3–4, 5–6, 7, 13, 15.

19.   Worcester to Samuel T. Worcester, August 6, 1860, Worcester Letters.

20.   Swan, The Critic Criticized and Worcester Vindicated. Swan’s essay is discussed in Higgins, A Distinguished and Gracious New England Lexicographer, 133–41.

21.   Agassiz quoted in Swan, A Comparison of Worcester’s and Webster’s Quarto Dictionaries, 22.

22.   Atlantic Monthly 5 (May 1860): 631; Wheatley, “Chronological Notices of Dictionaries of the English Language”; Athenaeum, October 1873, 48.

23.   Green, Chasing the Sun, 275.

24.   For sales figures, see Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language before 1861, 263–72.

25.   Worcester to Samuel T. Worcester, April 16, 1865, Worcester Letters. See also Faust, The Republic of Suffering.

26.   Worcester’s dictionaries, largely unrevised, were left to make their lonely way in the world and pretty well disappeared except for editions of his Comprehensive Dictionary in 1871; The Universal and Critical Dictionary in 1874; his magnum opus, A Dictionary of the English Language, in 1881, 1886, 1908; more recently (with supplement) his Academic Dictionary: A New Etymological Dictionary of the English Language in 1888 and 1910; and his New School Dictionary in 1926.

27.   Lippincott to Stewart Archer Steger, quoted in Steger’s book, American Dictionaries, 82.

28.   Abbot, “Joseph Emerson Worcester,” 114–15.

29.   “President’s Remarks on Dr. Worcester,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 8 (November 1864–65): 467–68.

Chapter 17

1.     Goodrich to the Merriams, January 1860, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 134.

2.     Porter to the Merriams, February 3, 1860, Merriam Papers, box 13, folder 249.

3.     Goodrich to the Merriams, January 26, 1860, Merriam Papers, box 10, folder 133.

4.     Dexter is quoted in “Chauncey Allen Goodrich: Yale’s Professor of Compassion and Revival,” Yale Standard, February 26, 2012, 7; Woolsey, “A Discourse Commemorative of the Life and Service of the Rev. Chauncey Allen Goodrich.”

5.     William Adolpus Wheeler to the Merriams, November 29, 1860, Merriam Papers, box 17, folder 349.

6.     Merriams to Wheeler, February 20, 1862, Merriam Papers, box 17, folder 357.

7.     See Winchester, The Professor and the Madman; Kendall, “A Minor Exception”; and Ken-dall, “Redefining Webster’s” (mainly on Gilbert).

8.     Charles Merriam, “Recollections,” Merriam Papers, box 101, folder 696. For details regarding the stereotyping and publication process of the 1864 edition, see Madeline Kripke, “Guest Post: ‘Get the Best’: Bringing a Dictionary to Market in 1864,” Merriam-Webster Unabridged, November 20, 2014, http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/blog/2014/11/guest-post-get-the-best-bringing-a-dictionary-to-market-in-1864. Madeline Kripke owns a vast personal collection of nineteenth-century archives and private papers of the G. & C. Merriam Company, as well as one of the largest collections of dictionaries of English in the world.

9.     “Thank God for Worcester”: see Merriam Papers, box 95, folder 681; Porter, preface, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1864; rev. and enlarged ed., 1874), v.

10.   Porter, preface, An American Dictionary of the English Language, iii, v, iii, viii.

11.   Leavitt, Noah’s Ark, New England Yankees, and the Endless Quest, 54. See also Deppman, Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson, 113. Deppman’s book is an insightful look at how the definitions of words were at the center of much of Dickinson’s poetry, and (more specifically) how the 1844 edition of Webster’s dictionary, like the King James Bible, is “an important source for reading Emily Dickinson’s life and work.”

12.   Emerson to the Merriams, August 21, 1864, Merriam Papers, box 9, folder 102; Longfellow to the Merriams, August 17, 1878, Merriam Papers, box 12, folder 202; Whittier to the Merriams, November 10, 1878 (quoted in Leavitt, Noah’s Ark, New England Yankees, and the Endless Quest, 66).

13.   Twain (Samuel Clemens) to the Merriams, March 1891, Merriam Papers, box 8, folder 70.

14.   Whitman, An American Primer, 30.

15.   Grant, quoted in Leavitt, Noah’s Ark, New England Yankees, and the Endless Quest, 65.

16.   “English Dictionaries,” London Quarterly Review, October 1873, quoted in Noah’s Ark, New England Yankees, and the Endless Quest, 69.

17.   George Merriam to Charles Merriam, November 19, 1844, Merriam Papers, box 12, folder 219.

Appendix A

1.     Quoted by Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 305. For a brief but clear account of the complicated legislation relating to the Merriam brand, see 307.

2.     On the Webster name, see Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 299–308.

3.     Foreword, Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, vii.