The Forgotten Founding Father

Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture

by Joshua Kendall

ebook

2 of 2 copies available

Noah Webster's name is now synonymous with the dictionary he created, but his story is not nearly so ubiquitous. Now acclaimed author of The Man Who Made Lists, Joshua Kendall sheds new light on Webster's life, and his far-reaching influence in establishing the American nation.

Webster hobnobbed with various Founding Fathers and was a young confidant of George Washington and Ben Franklin. He started New York's first daily newspaper, predating Alexander Hamilton's New York Post. His "blue-backed speller" for schoolchildren sold millions of copies and influenced early copyright law. But perhaps most important, Webster was an ardent supporter of a unified, definitively American culture, distinct from the British, at a time when the United States of America were anything but unified-and his dictionary of American English is a testament to that.

Creators
- Joshua Kendall
  
  Author
Publisher

Penguin Publishing Group
Release date

April 14, 2011
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  - ISBN: 9781101486542
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  - ISBN: 9781101486542
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Languages
- English
Reviews
- Publisher's Weekly
  
  February 7, 2011
  In 1828 Noah Webster published the groundbreaking American Dictionary of the English Language and secured his niche as an avatar of a distinct American culture. Kendall (The Man Who Made Lists) honors Webster's crucial contributions to early American nationalism, which extended far beyond his primary obsession, the written word. Kendall paints a complex portrait of Webster (1758–1843), a man he claims "housed a host of contradictory identities: revolutionary, reactionary, fighter, peacemaker, intellectual, commonsense philosopher, ladies' man, prig, slick networker and loner." In spite of his flaws, Webster, Kendall argues not wholly successfully, belongs among the ranks of America's notable founders, associating with George Washington and Ben Franklin, among others, to craft an early American identity rooted in national pride and a distinctly American lexicon. Citing frequent references to Webster's nervous afflictions, Kendall ventures the somewhat shaky diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The book includes the politics of the "forgotten" founder, for example, noting that Webster "detested Andrew Jackson as the second coming of Jefferson," and a wide range of his activities, including helping found Amherst College. Kendall provides an intriguing look at one of America's earliest men of letters that is sure to appeal to lovers of both words and history.
- Kirkus
  
  February 1, 2011
  Freelance journalist Kendall (The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus, 2008) tells the story of the remarkable Noah Webster (1758–1843)—lexicographer, political theorist, journalist, co-founder of Amherst College, polymath.
  
  The author notes that many Americans confuse Webster with his more famous distant cousin Daniel. But Kendall's biography may change that. Born on a farm in Hartford, Conn., Webster attended school only a few months a year but entered Yale in 1774, where he befriended poet Joel Barlow (with whom he fell out, over religion, many decades later). Webster became the friend and acquaintance of many of the luminaries of the American Revolution, George Washington among them, but he struggled to find a career. He tried teaching and the law, struggling in both. However, he wrote fiery pamphlets and newspaper essays and then published his famous spelling book that, off and on, enriched him, frustrated him and propelled him into celebrity. It also occasioned the genesis of the spelling bee. Kendall argues that Webster invented the author tour, a contention that is hard to deny—he traveled all over the country promoting his writing, making deals, pressing flesh, smiling and schmoozing. He was also an early abolitionist. He first found career stability in journalism, editing the Federalist newspaper American Minerva. Just before the turn of the century, he found another love: lexicography. Kendall writes that Webster had a most orderly mind, which sought to categorize and record everything. Though his was not the first American dictionary, it was by far the most thorough and influential. The American Dictionary appeared in 1828, was a quick success and lives on as Merriam-Webster's (the Merriam family joined the enterprise in 1843).
  
  A gracefully told story that commands attention and confers on Webster deserved honor too long deferred.
  (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
- Library Journal
  
  March 15, 2011
  Kendall (The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus) provides a compelling chronicle of the foremost name in American lexicography. A part of the celebrated Yale graduating class of 1778 and a lifelong social and political conservative, Noah Webster had a penchant for rubbing people the wrong way as pronounced as his knack for words. His mechanism for coping with recurrent depression, compiling data, would lead to the creation of one of the best-known works in American history. While lacking in pure literary talent, Webster was a master of self-promotion who relentlessly lobbied for extensive copyright laws, a stronger national union, and the creation of a uniquely American identity. VERDICT Though the title of Kendall's work may overplay Webster's political legacy, this is certainly a poignant look into the life of a figure who played a central role in the historical development of the American language. Kendall capably delves beyond the realm of words and into Webster's social and intellectual worlds. Recommended for fans of historical biography and early American cultural history.--Brian Odom, Pelham P.L., AL
  
  Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Booklist
  
  March 15, 2011
  In a natural sequel to his biography of the Roget of thesaurus fame, The Man Who Made Lists (2008), Kendall highlights the personality of Americas seminal lexicographer, humanizing the name synonymous with dictionaries. Noah Websters most salient trait, Kendall says, was obsessive/compulsive personality disorder. If thats true, it cost Webster much in society, business, and politics, as Kendalls quotations of the hostile opinions extracted from his comprehensive research attest. Webster was arrogant and tactless, but his fixations on orderliness and precision with words were indispensable to the achievement of his renowned dictionary, first published in 1828. Besides stressing the warts-and-all motif, Kendall links Webster to revolutionary Americas illustrious patriots (Webster knew Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton) and the countrys nascent literary stratum, in which his argumentative inclinations thrived, though not often profitably. Completing his well-rounded portrait, Kendall sensitively depicts the dynamics of Websters family, almost sighing over the demands the self-centered Webster placed on wife and children. Doyens of diction as well as of early American history stand to be pleased by this perceptive, fluidly written biography.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
- Kirkus
  
  February 1, 2011
  Freelance journalist Kendall (The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus, 2008) tells the story of the remarkable Noah Webster (1758-1843)--lexicographer, political theorist, journalist, co-founder of Amherst College, polymath.
  
  The author notes that many Americans confuse Webster with his more famous distant cousin Daniel. But Kendall's biography may change that. Born on a farm in Hartford, Conn., Webster attended school only a few months a year but entered Yale in 1774, where he befriended poet Joel Barlow (with whom he fell out, over religion, many decades later). Webster became the friend and acquaintance of many of the luminaries of the American Revolution, George Washington among them, but he struggled to find a career. He tried teaching and the law, struggling in both. However, he wrote fiery pamphlets and newspaper essays and then published his famous spelling book that, off and on, enriched him, frustrated him and propelled him into celebrity. It also occasioned the genesis of the spelling bee. Kendall argues that Webster invented the author tour, a contention that is hard to deny--he traveled all over the country promoting his writing, making deals, pressing flesh, smiling and schmoozing. He was also an early abolitionist. He first found career stability in journalism, editing the Federalist newspaper American Minerva. Just before the turn of the century, he found another love: lexicography. Kendall writes that Webster had a most orderly mind, which sought to categorize and record everything. Though his was not the first American dictionary, it was by far the most thorough and influential. The American Dictionary appeared in 1828, was a quick success and lives on as Merriam-Webster's (the Merriam family joined the enterprise in 1843).
  
  A gracefully told story that commands attention and confers on Webster deserved honor too long deferred.
  (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
- BookPage
  
  Noah Webster devoted his life to establishing a distinctly American culture. At the beginning of his literary career he noted the importance of America being, in his words, “as independent in literature as she is in politics—as famous for arts as for arms.” His best-known contribution toward this end was, of course, his American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, but his legacy includes much more. His American Spelling Book sold an incredible 100 million copies. He drafted America’s first copyright laws and was the first editor of the first daily newspaper in New York City. He served as a state legislator in both Connecticut and Massachusetts, he was involved in the founding of Amherst College, and his habit of counting houses wherever he went inspired the first census. One scholar has called him a “multiple founding father,” but most people do not remember him that way.In his enlightening and absorbing The Forgotten Founding Father, Joshua Kendall helps us understand both Webster’s achievements and the reasons why he is not recognized in the same company as his role model Benjamin Franklin. Kendall’s previous book, the widely praised The Man Who Made Lists, was a biography of Peter Mark Roget, of thesaurus fame, another word-obsessed man.Although his contemporaries recognized Webster’s great abilities, they were also aware of his negative traits: He was arrogant and tactless, often argumentative, a perpetual self-promoter and wholly self-absorbed. Kendall has closely examined Webster’s diaries and letters, including some that the family has long suppressed, and believes that Webster could not help himself—that he suffered from what psychiatrists today would identify as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Kendall thinks that Webster’s 30-year struggle to finish his dictionary was a case in which his “pathology was instrumental to his success.” But it also may have been a factor in the many contradictory identities he displayed over the years, including patriot, political reactionary, peacemaker, ladies’ man and “prig.” Words seemed always to be his best friends, and defining them was an obsession that ruled him.Kendall’s discussion of the content of Webster’s dictionary is eye-opening and fascinating. Although Webster borrowed generously from Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, he also expanded it to 70,000 words—12,000 more than the latest edition of Johnson’s. Webster celebrated America’s founders and offered countless references to American locales. He also used many references from his own life. The definitions were often didactic, in line with Webster’s devout Christian values, and his questionable etymological ideas appeared on occasion; he had “a penchant for making wild guesses about the roots of words.”There is so much more in Kendall’s superbly written and carefully balanced narrative of an American original. One comes away convinced that this complex and often difficult man was a major force for creating a sense of American nationalism and unity among his fellow citizens.