WEBSTER, NOAH (1758-1843), American lexicographer and journalist, was born at West Hartford, Conn. on Oct. 16, 1758. He was descended from John Webster, of Hartford, gov ernor of Connecticut in 1656-57, and on his mother's side from Governor William Bradford, of Plymouth. He worked on his father's farm while preparing for Yale, graduated in 1778, taught in village schools, studied law, and was admitted to the bar at Hartford in 1781. In 1783-85 he published at Hartford A Gram matical Institute of the English Language in three parts, a spelling book, a grammar and a reader. This was the pioneer American work in its field and because of its useful simplification of Eng lish spelling and its patriotic nature it soon found a place in most of the schools of the United States. During the 20 years in which Webster was preparing his dictionary, his income from the spell ing-book was the chief source for the support of his family; and before 1861 the sale reached more than a million copies a year. He did some political writing, and himself regarded his Sketches of American Policy (1785) as the first distinct proposal for a U.S. constitution. In 1788 he started in New York the American Magazine, but it failed at the end of a year, and he resumed the practice of law at Hartford, where he enjoyed the congenial com panionship of the "Hartford wits." In 1793, in order to support Washington's administration and oppose the designs of Genet, he established a daily paper, the Minerva (afterwards the Com mercial Advertiser), in New York and in connection with it a semi weekly paper, the Herald (afterwards the New York Spectator). The remainder of his life was spent in New Haven, Conn., and
Amherst, Mass., in both places holding various public posts, in cluding membership in the Connecticut House of Representatives and a county judgeship, but he devoted himself primarily to linguistic studies. In i8o6 he brought out A Compendious Dic tionary of the English Language which contained much encyclo paedic information, and in 1807, A Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language. He began his great diction ary the same year. In 1824-25 he worked on this in France and England, finishing his manuscript at the University of Cambridge. The American Dictionary came out in 1828 in two volumes. It contained 12,000 words and from 30,00o to 40,00o definitions that had not appeared in any earlier dictionary. An English edition soon followed. In 1840 appeared the second edition, corrected and enlarged. Webster completed the revision of an appendix a few days before his death, which occurred in New Haven on May 28, 1843. Many revisions and abridgments have since appeared. Amongst Webster's other works may be mentioned Dissertations on the English. Language (1789) ; The Rights of Neutral Nations in Time of War (1802) and A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (1843) and Governor John Winthrop's Journal in 1790.
See Memoir of Noah Webster by his son-in-law, Prof. Chauncey A. Goodrich, in the quarto editions of the Dictionary; Noah Webster 0880, by H. E. Scudder, in "American Men of Letters"; and Notes on the Life of Noah Webster by a grand-daughter, Emily E. F. Ford (1912), which contains many letters.