Noah webster writings and biography of michael

Early life

Noah Webster was born on October 16, , in West Hartford, Connecticut. The fourth son of five children of Noah and Mercy Steele Webster, young Noah showed exceptional scholarly talents as a child, and his father sacrificed much in order that his son would gain the best education available.

In , at age sixteen, Webster entered Yale College, sharing literary ambitions with his classmate Joel Barlow and tutor Timothy Dwight. His college years were interrupted by terms of military service. After his graduation in , Noah began studying law, but because his father could no longer support him, he took a job as a schoolmaster in Hartford, Litchfield, and Sharon, all in Connecticut.

My analyze of Noah Webster, his moral beliefs, his religious conversion, his political persuasions, and his voluminous writings, has indisputably revealed that Webster intended to shape the entire American nation through his writings and through its universal education system. Relying primarily on Webster's early works and his dictionaryI discovered his strong convictions against slavery, his promotion of formal education for women, his moral biases, his political ethics, and his ardent support for an independent American republic; The thesis that evolved is developed in five chapters beginning with a characterization of Webster in Chapter One, describing his profound patriotism and his bookish world. Chapter Two investigates Webster's ideology; Chapter Three imparts his alter on American education and culture; Chapter Four communicates his timely and universal thoughts; Chapter Five reveals Webster's innate abilities and application of effective methods to achieve his ends. Within each chapter, original word entries to include the entire alphabet were selected from Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language to reveal the culture of his time, to convey the extensive influence of Webster's writings, and to express the heart and mind of the man himself.

Meanwhile, he read widely and studied law. He was admitted to the bar (an association for lawyers) and received his master of arts degree in Dissatisfied with the British-made textbooks available for teaching, he determined to produce his own. He had, he said, &#x;too much pride to stand indebted to Great Britain for books to learn our children.&#x;

Schoolmaster to America

Webster soon developed the first of his long series of American schoolbooks, a speller titled A Grammatical Institute of the English

Language, Part I (). Famous for generations simply as The Blue-back Speller, it was in use for more than a century and sold over seventy million copies.

His book&#x;s effect on students is said to have been unequaled in the history of American elementary education. Part II of the Grammatical Institute, a grammar, reprinted often under various titles, appeared in Part III, a reader, in the original edition included sections from yet-unpublished poetry by Dwight and Barlow.

Noah Webster | American Lexicographer & Educator | Britannica: ster was born on October 16, , in the Noah ster Property in western Hartford, Connecticut Colony, during the colonial-era. The area of his birth later became West Hartford, Connecticut. He was born into an established family, and the Noah ster Home continues to highlight his existence and serves as the headquarters of the West Hartford.

Though the reader had a shorter life and more vigorous rivalry than other parts of the Institute, it set a patriotic (having to do with the love for one&#x;s country) and moralistic (having to complete with right and wrong) pattern followed by rival books, some of which were thought to attract attention because they were more religiously orientated.

Webster stressed what he called the &#x;art of reading&#x; in later volumes, including two secularized (nonreligious) versions of The New England Primer (, ), The Little Reader&#x;s Assistant (), The Elementary Primer (), and The Little Franklin ().

Webster toured the Merged States from Maine to Georgia selling his textbooks, convinced that &#x;America must be as independent in literature as she is in politics, as famous for arts as for arms, &#x; but that to accomplish this she must protect by (the legal right of artistic work) the literary products of her countrymen.

He pleaded so effectively that uniform laws were passed early in most of the states, and it was largely through his continuing effort that Congress in passed a bill which ensured protection to writers. On his travels he also peddled (sold from door to door) his Sketches of American Policy (), a vigorous plea on behalf of the Federalists, a then-popular political party that believed in a strong primary government.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he paused briefly to instruct school and see new editions of his Institute through the press, he published his politically effective An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution ().

Noah Webster, American lexicographer one who compiles a dictionaryremembered now almost solely as the compiler of a continuously achieving dictionary, was for half a century among the more leading and most active literary men in the United States. The fourth son of five children of Noah and Mercy Steele Webster, young Noah showed exceptional scholarly talents as a minor, and his father sacrificed much in order that his son would gain the best awareness available. Inat age sixteen, Webster entered Yale College, sharing literary ambitions with his classmate Joel Barlow and tutor Timothy Dwight. His college years were interrupted by terms of military service.

In New York Town, Webster established the American Magazine (&#x;88), which he hoped might become a national periodical (magazine distributed regularly). In it he pled for American intellectual independence, education for women, and the support of Federalist ideas.

Though it survived for only twelve monthly issues, it is remembered as one of the most lively, bravely adventuresome of early American periodicals. He continued as a political reporter with such pamphlets as The Effects of Slavery on Morals and Industry (), The Revolution in France (), and The Rights of Neutral Nations ().

Noah Webster October 16, — May 28, was an American lexicographertextbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformerpolitical writereditor, and author. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education". His "Blue-Backed Speller" books taught generations of American children how to spell and read. Webster's name has become synonymous with " dictionary " in the United States, especially the contemporary Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in as An American Dictionary of the English Language.

Language reform

But Webster&#x;s principal interest became language reform, or improvement. As he set forth his ideas in Dissertations on the English Language (), theatre should be spelled theater; machine, masheen; plough, plow; draught, draft.

For a time he put forward claims for such reform in his readers and spellers and in his Collection of Essays and Fugitiv [sic] Writings (), which encouraged &#x;reezoning,&#x; &#x;yung&#x; persons, &#x;reeding,&#x; and a &#x;zeel&#x; for &#x;lerning&#x;; but he was too precise a Yankee to allow odd behavior to stand in the way of profit.

In The Prompter () he quietly lectured his countrymen in corrective essays written plainly, in a simple and to-the-point approach.

After Webster married in , he practiced law in Hartford for four years before returning to New York Metropolis to edit the city&#x;s first daily newspaper, the American Minerva (&#x;98).

Noah's was an average colonial family. His father farmed and worked as a weaver. His mother worked at home. Noah and his two brothers, Charles and Abraham, helped their father with the farm work.

Tiring of the controversy (open to dispute) brought on by his forthright phrase of Federalist opinion, he retired to New Haven, Connecticut, to write A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases () and to position together a volume of Miscellaneous Papers ().

The dictionaries

From this time on, Webster gave most of his attention to preparing more schoolbooks, including A Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language (). But he was primarily concerned with assembling A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (); its shorter version, A Dictionary &#x; Compiled for the Use of Ordinary Schools (, revised ); and finally, in two volumes, An American Dictionary of the English Language ().

In range this last surpassed (went beyond) any dictionary of its time. A second edition, &#x;corrected and enlarged&#x; (), became known popularly as Webster&#x;s Unabridged. Conservative contemporaries (people of the same time or period), alarmed at its unorthodoxies (untraditional) in spelling, usage, and pronunciation and its proud inclusion of Americanisms, dubbed the serve as &#x;Noah&#x;s Ark.&#x; However, after Webster&#x;s death the rights were sold in to George and Charles Merriam, printers in Worcester, Massachusetts; and the dictionary has become, through many revisions, the foundation and defender of operative American lexicography.

Webster&#x;s other late writings included A History of the United States (), a version of the Bible () cleansed of all words and phrases risky to children or &#x;offensive especially to females,&#x; and a terminal Collection of Papers on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects ().

Tall, redheaded, lanky, humorless, he was the butt of many cruel criticisms in his time. Noah Webster died in New Haven on May 23,

For More Data

Micklethwait, David. Noah Webster and the American Dictionary. Jefferson, NC: McFarland,

Moss, Richard J.

Noah Webster. Boston: Twayne Publishers,

Rollins, Richard M. The Long Journey of Noah Webster. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

Snyder, K. Alan.

The writings of Noah ster are divided by topic and arranged alphabetically within each topic. The series includes manuscript drafts of writings on assorted topics including etymology and orthography, legislative matters, and politics and history. Items of note among the writings of Noah ster include ster's manuscript.

Defining Noah Webster. Lanham, MD: University Press of America,

Unger, Harlow G. Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot. New York: John Wiley &#x; Sons,