Few men have influenced the development of American English to the extent that Noah Webster did. Born in West Hartford, Connecticut, in 1758, Webster graduated from Yale in 1778. He was admitted to the bar in 1781 and thereafter began to practice law in Hartford. Later, when he turned to teaching, he discovered how inadequate the available schoolbooks were for the children of a new and independent nation. In response to the need for truly American textbooks, Webster published A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, a three-volume work that consisted of a speller, a grammar, and a reader. The first volume, which was generally known as The American Spelling Book, was so popular that eventually it sold more than 80 million copies and provided him with a considerable income for the rest of his life. While teaching, Webster began work on the Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, which was published in 1806, and was also very successful.
In 1807, Noah Webster began his greatest work, An American Dictionary of the English Language. In preparing the manuscript, he devoted ten years to the study of English and its relationship to other languages, and seven more years to the writing itself. Published in two volumes in 1828,
An American Dictionary o1 the English Language has become the recognized authority for usage in the United States. Webster’s purpose in writing it was to demonstrate that the American language was developing distinct meanings, pronunciations, and spellings from those of British English.
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