Noah Webster (1758–1843)

Although best remembered today for his American Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1828, Noah Webster was best known in the nineteenth century for his American Spelling Book (also known as the Blue-Backed Speller). This small, blue-backed booklet appeared in 1783 and became the most widely used schoolbook during the early nineteenth century.

A native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale University, Webster was a lawyer, schoolmaster, politician, and writer. His intellectual interests were extremely broad. He wrote a paper on epidemic and pestilential diseases, edited John Wingate’s historical journal, wrote several scientific treatises, discoursed on banking and insurance, and, along the way, mastered twenty-six languages, including Sanskrit!

An intensely patriotic individual, Webster believed that America had to shed its British influence and develop its own sense of cultural identity and unity. The best way to do this, he believed, was to reshape English language and literature to reflect the unique American culture. The creation of an American language would bind the people together and help produce a strong sense of nationalism. His dictionary contained the first-time appearance of such American words as plantation, hickory, presidential, and pecan.

Webster knew that if Americans were to develop a sense of national identity and pride, the process should start at an early age. Accordingly, he wrote his blue-backed American Spelling Book, one of the most successful books ever written. Roughly 100 million copies were printed, and it is estimated that more than a billion readers used the book—a record surpassed only by the Bible. The American Spelling Book was often the only book schoolchildren had because it served as a combination primer, reader, and speller. The book contained many moral stories and lessons, as well as word lists and guides to pronunciation. Webster must be credited with the fact that Americans differ from the British in writing color instead of colour and center instead of centre. Not only did he set the style for American spelling, but he made it the liveliest subject in the classroom. Spelling bees and other spelling games brightened up otherwise typically dull instruction.

Known as the "schoolmaster of the republic," Noah Webster campaigned for free schools for both boys and girls in which children could learn the virtues of liberty, just laws, patriotism, hard work, and morality. He was an educational statesman whose work, more than anyone else’s, helped create a sense of American language and national culture.

Visit the following web sites for more information on Noah Webster:

Noah Webster House Museum

http://noahwebsterhouse.org/

Take a virtual tour of Noah Webster’s herb garden or learn more about his political views at this site.

Noah Webster

http://kids.infoplease.lycos.com/ce6/people/A0851735.html

The kids’ area of the search engine, Lycos, offers this brief biography of Noah Webster.

American Spelling Book

http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/nietz.pl?notisid=00acf7166m&type=header

You can see the full text of Noah Webster’s famous Blue-Backed Speller online.