Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
Speaker 2: and I'm Holly Frye. So in our episode on Nicks
Speaker 2: Versus Headen, we mentioned that there was an intense rivalry
Speaker 2: between Noah Webster and Joseph Emerson Wooster and their dictionaries,
Speaker 2: which came to be known as the Dictionary Wars. I
Speaker 2: don't remember if I described it exactly as a rivalry
Speaker 2: in that episode. If I did, I kind of wish
Speaker 2: that wasn't the word that I had chosen, because now
Speaker 2: having researched it more, I don't think that's the best descriptor.
Speaker 2: I said. There might be a future episode on it, though,
Speaker 2: And here it is. This grew into a two parter,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of tangled because Wooster and Webster, they
Speaker 2: each had their own lives. The Dictionary Wars went on
Speaker 2: long after Webster's death, whether Wooster wanted them to or not.
Speaker 2: So in this what I decided to do, rather than
Speaker 2: trying to lay out this whole thing strictly in chronological order,
Speaker 2: We're going to have part one today's episode more about
Speaker 2: these two men's biographies, and then Part two is more
Speaker 2: detail about these dictionary wars. And as a note upfront,
Speaker 2: a whole lot of the writing about the dictionary wars
Speaker 2: differentiates among all these different editions of the dictionaries in question,
Speaker 2: mainly by talking about the formats they were printed in,
Speaker 2: using terms like octavo and quarto, So if you're not
Speaker 2: familiar with that terminology, it comes from how books were printed.
Speaker 2: So in a folio there would be one piece of
Speaker 2: paper folded in half that would create four total pages
Speaker 2: of a book, and then in a quarto the paper
Speaker 2: was folded twice made eight pages, and then in octavo
Speaker 2: threefolds made sixteen pages, and then it just goes on
Speaker 2: from there. And in terms of the height of the
Speaker 2: finished books, the folios are the tallest. Each successive size
Speaker 2: is smaller than the last one, so like the folios
Speaker 2: are big, hefty books, and a quarto would be like
Speaker 2: much smaller. This is a totally reasonable way to talk
Speaker 2: about these books. They were advertised that way at the time.
Speaker 2: To some extent, these words are still around. I think
Speaker 2: they come up most often talking about things like Shakespeare's
Speaker 2: first folio and things like that. But this is just
Speaker 2: not how books are printed anymore. In the context of
Speaker 2: an audio podcast, that seems a little unwieldy, especially since
Speaker 2: we know a lot of people listen to podcasts while
Speaker 2: they're doing something else. So I'm sort of imagining somebody
Speaker 2: in the middle of doing their dishes and going, wait,
Speaker 2: which one was the quarto? What is a quarto?
Speaker 1: Again?
Speaker 2: So, if you're really familiar with all this or it's
Speaker 2: connected to your field in this in some way, and
Speaker 2: you're listening and you're like, why aren't they just calling
Speaker 2: this the quarto, that's why. So because he was the
Speaker 2: older of the two men and he started publishing first,
Speaker 2: we're going to start with Noah Webster Junior. He has
Speaker 2: also gotten significantly more attention from historians and biographers than
Speaker 2: Wooster has, so his part of today's episode is going
Speaker 2: to be longer than Worcester's. Webster was born on October sixteenth,
Speaker 2: seventeen fifty eight, in the West Division of Hartford, Connecticut
Speaker 2: that's now just West Hartford. His parents were Noah Webster
Speaker 2: Senior and Mercy Steele Webster, and he was one of
Speaker 2: their five children. When Webster started studying at Yale College,
Speaker 2: it only had about one hundred and fifty students and
Speaker 2: two professors. He took a brief break from studying there
Speaker 2: to fight in the Revolutionary War, and then he graduated
Speaker 2: in seventeen seventy eight. He wanted to study law, but
Speaker 2: his family really couldn't afford to send him to law school,
Speaker 2: so he became a teacher and studied law on his own.
Speaker 2: He was admitted to the bar in seventeen eighty one,
Speaker 2: but turned out he couldn't really make enough money as
Speaker 2: a lawyer, so he turned his attention to something that
Speaker 2: he thought was sorely needed, and that was schoolbooks for
Speaker 2: children that were written in the United States by an
Speaker 2: American rather than being imported from Britain. This was during
Speaker 2: a time when there was a lot of debate in
Speaker 2: the United States about language and literature. Some people, including
Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson, thought that as an independent nation, the United
Speaker 2: States should be freed from the linguistic and literary expectations
Speaker 2: of British English and should have a language and a
Speaker 2: literary canon of its own. A lot of other prominent
Speaker 2: figures thought the same, although this was not at all universal.
Speaker 2: There were also people who thought North American slang and
Speaker 2: pronunciations were vulgar and were not only ruining the English language,
Speaker 2: but were also reinforcing stereotypes of Americans as coarse and ignorant,
Speaker 2: and the battle continues today. It never ever ended. For
Speaker 2: Webster and for others, this wasn't just about creating a
Speaker 2: national identity for the United States. It was also connected
Speaker 2: to the idea that a democracy could only flourish if
Speaker 2: its citizens were educated, and that education required high quality
Speaker 2: textbooks that did not, for example, include a bunch of
Speaker 2: stuff about loyalty to the crown, which was common in
Speaker 2: a lot of the imported textbooks, and Webster's words quote,
Speaker 2: I have too much pride not to wish to see
Speaker 2: America assume a national character. I have too much pride
Speaker 2: to stand indebted to Great Britain for books to teach
Speaker 2: our children the alphabet. Webster's first foray into all this
Speaker 2: was the American Spelling Book, that was in seventeen eighty three,
Speaker 2: the same year that the Revolutionary War ended. He was
Speaker 2: inspired by a new Guide to the English Tongue in
Speaker 2: five Parts by English cleric Thomas Dilworth, which was widely
Speaker 2: used in the United States, even though it was clearly
Speaker 2: written for British children and had some odd pronunciation rules.
Speaker 2: Webster used this book as his starting point adapting it
Speaker 2: for American use, and at some point afterward someone writing
Speaker 2: under the name Dilworth's Ghosts accused him of plagiarizing it.
Speaker 2: In seventeen eighty four, Webster published A Grammar and then
Speaker 2: A Reader in seventeen eighty five. Together with the Speller,
Speaker 2: they formed a Grammatical Institute of the English Language, comprising
Speaker 2: an easy, concise, and systematic method of education designed for
Speaker 2: the use of English schools in America. I didn't read
Speaker 2: out the commas, but they're kind of sprinkled through there,
Speaker 2: just a casual comma, do.
Speaker 1: We need another? Yes?
Speaker 2: Some of them seem extraneous. This became an immensely popular
Speaker 2: work and was widely used until about nineteen hundred, selling
Speaker 2: roughly seventy million copies. In addition to writing books that
Speaker 2: he hoped would prepare children to be an active part
Speaker 2: of a healthy democracy, Webster was writing about democracy itself.
Speaker 2: His seventeen eighty five Sketches of American Policy advocated for,
Speaker 2: among other things, a constitution that would end slavery and
Speaker 2: institute a universal education program. Webster was very politically active
Speaker 2: and was a big part of trying to establish a
Speaker 2: culture in the early United States, and he was well
Speaker 2: connected to people like George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 2: so he is sometimes described as a forgotten founder. As
Speaker 2: soon as his first Speller was published, Webster also started
Speaker 2: advocating for copyright laws. This was absolutely about protecting his
Speaker 2: own interests. Who wasn't really motivated by having wider questions
Speaker 2: about copyright law and what should be protected. At this point,
Speaker 2: the basis of the US government was the Articles of Confederation,
Speaker 2: which did not allow for the federal government to pass
Speaker 2: a national copyright law. The Continental Congress had recommended that
Speaker 2: the states each passed their own law, so Webster traveled
Speaker 2: state to state and wrote to legislators and states that
Speaker 2: he could not personally visit. After the US Constitution was ratified,
Speaker 2: taking effect in seventeen eighty nine, Webster also lobbied for
Speaker 2: a federal copyright law, the first of which was passed
Speaker 2: in seventeen ninety. So, in addition to being described as
Speaker 2: a forgotten founder, Webster is sometimes also called the father
Speaker 2: of American copyright law, as he was working on that.
Speaker 2: In seventeen eighty seven, Webster founded American magazine in New
Speaker 2: York City, and then in seventeen eighty nine, when he
Speaker 2: was thirty one and she was twenty three, he got
Speaker 2: married to Rebecca Greenleaf. At first, she turned down his proposal,
Speaker 2: but he wrote her a letter and sent it along
Speaker 2: with a lock of his hair, saying quote, without you,
Speaker 2: the world is all alike to me, and with you,
Speaker 2: any part will be agreeable as a pledge of my sincerity,
Speaker 2: except a lack of hair, and keep it no longer
Speaker 2: than I deserve to be remembered. You must go, and
Speaker 2: I must be separated from all that is dear to me,
Speaker 2: but you will be attended by guardian angels and the
Speaker 2: best wishes of your sincere and respectful admirer. They eventually
Speaker 2: had six daughters and one son together, along with another
Speaker 2: son who died while he was still a baby. So
Speaker 2: I think that letter is pretty sweet and romantic. Definitely
Speaker 2: intended to be so. But Webster did not have a
Speaker 2: professional reputation as a sweetheart. He was described as extremely opinionated, combative,
Speaker 2: hard to get along with, and rude. He also had
Speaker 2: some controversial opinions. We'll be getting to some of them,
Speaker 2: and that those opinions combined with his demeanor to earn
Speaker 2: him a lot of detractors. He was also fond of
Speaker 2: publishing anonymous pieces that either praised his own work or
Speaker 2: attacked his critics. A little later in his life, he
Speaker 2: also had an intense religious experience and became a devout
Speaker 2: Calvinist and a born again Christian. And then after that
Speaker 2: a lot of people found his work to be excessively
Speaker 2: moralizing than his opinions to be increasingly conservative. Beyond that,
Speaker 2: he also experienced depression and anxiety for a lot of
Speaker 2: his life, and he referenced that often in his journals.
Speaker 1: The same year he married Rebecca Greenleaf, Webster wrote Dissertations
Speaker 1: on the English Language with Notes historical and critical, to
Speaker 1: which is added by way of appendix, an essay on
Speaker 1: a Reformed mode of Spelling, with doctor Franklin's arguments on
Speaker 1: that subject. Similar to earlier, a lot of uh, just
Speaker 1: kind of commas floating through there. It was dedicated to
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, and in it he argued for American English
Speaker 1: to be separated from the English of Britain. This included
Speaker 1: calling for reforms to how English was spelled. This set
Speaker 1: in part quote, now is the time and this is
Speaker 1: the country and which we may expect success in attempting
Speaker 1: changes to language, science, and government. Delay in the plan
Speaker 1: here proposed may be fatal. Under a tranquil general government,
Speaker 1: the minds of men may again sink into indolence, A
Speaker 1: national acquiescence in error will follow, and posterity be doomed
Speaker 1: to struggle with difficulties which time and accident will perpetually multiply.
Speaker 1: Let us then seize the present moment and establish a
Speaker 1: national language as well as a national government. Along with
Speaker 1: other changes, Webster argued that all superfluous or silent letters
Speaker 1: should be omitted, so that, for example, the word bread
Speaker 1: meaning the food would be spelled just b r ed
Speaker 1: get rid of that extra A, and the word give
Speaker 1: would have no silent e on the end. Letters that
Speaker 1: had indefinite sounds should also be replaced, so grief would
Speaker 1: become gr e, f daughter would become dawt er, and
Speaker 1: chorus would become ko r us like a whole phonetic situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In seventeen ninety, Webster published a collection of Essays
Speaker 2: and fugitive Writings by Noah Webster. This was written using
Speaker 2: his proposed spelling reforms, so in that title Fugitive does
Speaker 2: not have an E on the end. This book was
Speaker 2: quote designed to aid the principles of the revolution, to
Speaker 2: suppress political discord, and to diffuse a spirit of inquiry
Speaker 2: favorable to morals, science, and truth.
Speaker 1: The preface begins quote The following collection consists of essays
Speaker 1: and fugitive pieces written at various times and on different occasions,
Speaker 1: as will appear by their dates and subjects. So Fugitive
Speaker 1: repeats that spelling that Tracy just mentioned. Pieces is pee
Speaker 1: ces written, doesn't have its initial W, as is spelled
Speaker 1: with a Z instead of an S, will has only
Speaker 1: one L, and a peer is spelled appe er. Although
Speaker 1: I would make the case there's an extra P there
Speaker 1: by his rules.
Speaker 2: Now I'm like, did I accidentally No, I copied and that,
Speaker 2: so I'm pretty sure, pretty sure that second P was
Speaker 2: really there. The whole thing is like that, there's a
Speaker 2: lot about English spelling that really does not make sense,
Speaker 2: and this document did mostly spell words according to how
Speaker 2: they sound. But it will probably come as no surprise
Speaker 2: that a whole lot of people really made fun of
Speaker 2: this book and Webster lost a lot of money on it.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about some of his less
Speaker 1: laughable but still controversial work. After a sponsor break.
Speaker 2: In seventeen ninety three, Noah Webster founded two federalist newspapers,
Speaker 2: the American Minerva and The Herald. He sold them both
Speaker 2: in eighteen oh three. Before that, seventeen ninety five, he
Speaker 2: published a call for physicians to send him all of
Speaker 2: their thoughts on yellow fever. That's a disease that had
Speaker 2: caused a horrific epidemic in Philadelphia two years before and
Speaker 2: had also caused major outbreaks in other cities as well.
Speaker 2: Perhaps because he had already established a name for himself
Speaker 2: as a cantankerous man with weird opinions about spelling, he
Speaker 2: got a lot of criticism from the medical establishment for
Speaker 2: basically being a dilettante who was sticking his nose into
Speaker 2: stuff that he could not possibly understand. He did not
Speaker 2: give up, though, and in seventeen ninety six published a
Speaker 2: collection of papers on the subject of Billious Fevers, which
Speaker 2: was essentially a compendium of everything that known or believed
Speaker 2: about yellow fever at the time. This was followed by
Speaker 2: these seventeen ninety nine, A Brief History of Epidemic and
Speaker 2: Pestilential diseases with the principal phenomena of the physical world
Speaker 2: which precede and accompany them, and observations deduced from the facts.
Speaker 2: Stated in two volumes totaling roughly seven hundred pages, all
Speaker 2: of those spelled the way we would anticipate. Yes, However,
Speaker 2: it does say that it's a brief work. When it's
Speaker 2: seven hundred pages spread across two volume.
Speaker 1: Lies were told. This became a standard medical text, basically
Speaker 1: a chronological resource detailing as many epidemics and disease outbreaks
Speaker 1: as Webster could find information on.
Speaker 2: I mean, both of these had genuine value. We're talking
Speaker 2: about a time when there is no Google. Everyone does
Speaker 2: not have access to a medical library nearby. It was
Speaker 2: like everything that was known in one place that people
Speaker 2: could have on hand. Of Webster's efforts were particularly lucrative,
Speaker 2: though except the speller. The Speller did pretty well. He
Speaker 2: had a pretty big family, and that meant that their
Speaker 2: living expenses were high, So the Websters moved from place
Speaker 2: to places. They just tried to make ends meet. For
Speaker 2: a time, they lived in Amherst, where Webster helped found
Speaker 2: Amherst Academy and Amherst College in seventeen ninety eight, they
Speaker 2: moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where they got a good
Speaker 2: deal on a house because it had previously belonged to
Speaker 2: Benedict Arnold. In eighteen hundred, Noah Webster Junior announced his
Speaker 2: plan to write a dictionary, specifically an American dictionary. He
Speaker 2: wanted it to follow the spelling reforms he advocated and
Speaker 2: include words that had been added to the English language
Speaker 2: in the United States. Its quotations and examples would come
Speaker 2: from American sources, not British ones. Naturally, he got a
Speaker 2: lot of criticism for this, for all of the reasons
Speaker 2: that we have already discussed. Yeah, there were certainly people
Speaker 2: who thought, yes, we need an American dictionary, but a
Speaker 2: lot of people who thought that Noah Webster should not
Speaker 2: be the person to do it. A lot of people
Speaker 2: today write about Webster is having been a huge part
Speaker 2: of creating a national identity for the United States. Through
Speaker 2: this and other dictionaries and his other writing and other activities,
Speaker 2: he repeatedly wrote about how creating a common national language would,
Speaker 2: in his opinion, form the foundation of a national unity,
Speaker 2: and his selections of American works for quotations and examples
Speaker 2: in these dictionaries like that was reinforcing the idea that
Speaker 2: the United States had its own literary canon, and that
Speaker 2: canon had value. The US did not need to just
Speaker 2: rely on works from Britain. But there's another way to
Speaker 2: look at this as well. In a twenty fourteen essay
Speaker 2: in William and Mary Quarterly, doctor Tim Cassidy frames this
Speaker 2: as more about Webster uniting people in their hatred of
Speaker 2: him quote. Webster did indeed play a role in forging
Speaker 2: American national sentiment, but not because his ideas were popular, representative,
Speaker 2: or accepted. Rather, by holding or seeming to hold very
Speaker 2: unpopular positions about American language, Webster unintentionally catalyzed a large
Speaker 2: media phenomenon in which other writers hastened to counter his
Speaker 2: ideas with their own. Yeah, there were a lot, a
Speaker 2: lot of other schoolbooks and dictionaries and things like that
Speaker 2: during this era. He was not at all the only one.
Speaker 2: So Webster published his compendious Dictionary of the English Language
Speaker 2: in eighteen oh six. This was not the first English
Speaker 2: dictionary written or published in the United States, and it
Speaker 2: also was not the first dictionary to include words that
Speaker 2: had been coined in North America. But this eighteen oh
Speaker 2: six dictionary is often described as the first fairly comprehensive
Speaker 2: dictionary of American English. It contained more than forty thousand words.
Speaker 2: Webster did include some spelling changes, but these changes really
Speaker 2: were not as radical as his essays and fugitive writings
Speaker 2: had shown. This that he'd earlier called for. A few
Speaker 2: words do stand out, though, such as women spelled wimmn.
Speaker 2: He insisted this was the quote primitive and correct orthography.
Speaker 2: He also claimed to have added five thousand new words
Speaker 2: of American origin, although this included things like proper names
Speaker 2: and adjective forms of words that had only been defined
Speaker 2: as nouns in British dictionaries. Many of the new words
Speaker 2: he included had roots in Algonquian languages, including skunk, moose, moccasin,
Speaker 2: and squash. There were words that came from European languages
Speaker 2: as well, including chowder, which likely came from French via
Speaker 2: the maritime provinces of Canada in New England, cookie which
Speaker 2: came from Dutch, and cafeteria, which came from Spanish via Mexico.
Speaker 2: Although this is recognized as a noteworthy book, it was
Speaker 2: met with a lot of criticism. It was not reviewed
Speaker 2: particularly well. Eventually, Lyman Cobb, a young school teacher from
Speaker 2: New York, became one of Webster's most vocal critics, not
Speaker 2: just about this dictionary, but about his other work as well.
Speaker 2: Cobb started publishing his own competing spellers and dictionaries and
Speaker 2: other resources, in part because he thought Webster's were so bad.
Speaker 2: Cobb's first Speller came out in eighteen twenty one, when
Speaker 2: he was only twenty one, and a revised version followed
Speaker 2: four years later. He also started publishing criticisms of Webster
Speaker 2: in newspapers in eighteen twenty seven, and in eighteen thirty
Speaker 2: one he collected all these many many pieces into a
Speaker 2: critical review of the Orthography of Doctor Webster series of books.
Speaker 2: Among other things, Cob pointed out that there were a
Speaker 2: lot of discrepancies and inconsistencies among Webster's various books, like
Speaker 2: different spellers or editions of the Dictionary contained different spellings
Speaker 2: for the same words, or a word might be spelled
Speaker 2: one way in its own entry in the dictionary, but
Speaker 2: then spelled differently when it was used in definitions of
Speaker 2: other words. Webster spent a lot of time publishing rebuttals
Speaker 2: of Cobb's criticisms, as this was happening. Webster was also
Speaker 2: working on another bigger dictionary. He finished it in January
Speaker 2: of eighteen twenty five, after defining zimome or zinone as quote,
Speaker 2: one of the constituents of gluten. On finishing this dictionary,
Speaker 2: he wrote, quote, when I had come to the last word,
Speaker 2: I was seized with a trembling, which made it somewhat
Speaker 2: difficult to hold my pen steady for writing. This cause
Speaker 2: seems to have been the thought that I might not
Speaker 2: then live to finish the work, or the thought that
Speaker 2: I was so near the end of my labors. But
Speaker 2: I summoned strength to finish the last word, and then,
Speaker 2: walking about the room a few minutes, I recovered.
Speaker 1: It took three years to get this new dictionary into print,
Speaker 1: and the process was laborious. At first. Webster couldn't find
Speaker 1: a publisher, and eventually his son in law, Professor Chauncey
Speaker 1: Goodrich of Yale College, connected him to Sherman Converse. Converse
Speaker 1: and Goodrich wanted to address some of the same inconsistencies
Speaker 1: and errors that had already been pointed out with Webster's work,
Speaker 1: so James Gates Percival was hired as editor. Perceval was
Speaker 1: very conscientious and detail oriented, but Webster disagreed with a
Speaker 1: lot of his proposed edits, describing them as pedantry. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Webster got so fed up that he fired Perceval, with
Speaker 1: part of the dictionary still unedited. This dictionary, titled American
Speaker 1: Dictionary of the English Language, came out in eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: eight and contained more than sixty five thousand words. It
Speaker 1: also contained etymologies as well as usage examples that came
Speaker 1: from the writing of people like George Washington and Washington Irving,
Speaker 1: as well as the Christian Bible. Rather than using lots
Speaker 1: of British literature, a lot of sources say, Webster learned
Speaker 1: twenty six languages to research the etymologies in this dictionary.
Speaker 1: This included brushing up on languages that he already knew,
Speaker 1: like Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and German, as well as
Speaker 1: getting some familiarity with other languages from Europe, the Middle East,
Speaker 1: and Asia. But he wasn't exactly using all this study
Speaker 1: to accurately research the origin of each word. He was
Speaker 1: trying to prove that the biblical story of the Tower
Speaker 1: of Babel was true and that all of humanity had
Speaker 1: originally spoken the same language in the words of Scribner's
Speaker 1: Dictionary of American History, third edition quote. This etymology won
Speaker 1: almost no acceptance at the time and remains universally discredited.
Speaker 1: After publishing this dictionary, Webster renewed his call for a broader,
Speaker 1: stronger federal copyright law. Under the seventeen ninety Copyright Act
Speaker 1: that he had advocated for, copyright protection lasted for fourteen years,
Speaker 1: which he did not think was very long. It also
Speaker 1: expired if the author died before the end of that time.
Speaker 1: Webster was seventy, so he had reason to be concerned
Speaker 1: that if he died, his family might lose control over
Speaker 1: his work, and then might also lose any income they
Speaker 1: could have earned from it after his death. There were
Speaker 1: also some loopholes that didn't protect American authors from pirated
Speaker 1: versions of their work that were published in Britain. As
Speaker 1: this dictionary was being prepared for printing, Goodrich and Converse
Speaker 1: looked for someone to create an abridged version, something that
Speaker 1: would be smaller, less expensive, and even more mainstream. Webster
Speaker 1: didn't really have the time or energy to do this himself,
Speaker 1: and he had started working on another project. This was
Speaker 1: a version of the Bible with reformed spelling and with
Speaker 1: anything that Webster thought was dirty taken out. So Convers
Speaker 1: just hired someone else to do it, and that person
Speaker 1: was Joseph Emerson Wooster.
Speaker 2: Wooster already had an excellent reputation as a lexicographer and
Speaker 2: a researcher. He had previously abridged Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of
Speaker 2: the English Language, which was first published in seventeen fifty
Speaker 2: five and was still one of the most widely used
Speaker 2: and respected English dictionaries. Based on his reputation and his experience,
Speaker 2: Wooster seemed like the right person for the job, but
Speaker 2: he was also pretty reluctant to take it on because
Speaker 2: he was already working on a dictionary of his own. Eventually,
Speaker 2: Wooster took the job, and his abridged version of Webster's
Speaker 2: Dictionary came out in eighteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Webster himself was outraged. Con and Goodrich had basically cut
Speaker 1: him out of all the planning and decision making about
Speaker 1: this abridgement, probably on purpose because they knew he would
Speaker 1: disagree with a lot of their decisions. Webster was so
Speaker 1: upset that he decided to sell the rights to the
Speaker 1: abridged version Goodrich, who was married to Webster's daughter, Julia,
Speaker 1: talked him into selling the rights to him, arguing that
Speaker 1: the book should at least stay in the family.
Speaker 2: Worcester later published that dictionary he'd been working on, the
Speaker 2: one that had made him reluctant to work on Webster's abridgment,
Speaker 2: and eventually Webster accused him of plagiarism in that dictionary.
Speaker 2: We will be talking more about that next episode. After
Speaker 2: this dispute with Worcester, Webster seems to have become increasingly
Speaker 2: angry and unwell, more like an ongoing series of illnesses
Speaker 2: and discomforts, not really any particular major illness. He kept
Speaker 2: trying to promote his books, attack the work of his competitors,
Speaker 2: and arguing against the influence of British dictionaries and literature
Speaker 2: on American English.
Speaker 1: Webster's family also became increasingly divided for reasons connected to
Speaker 1: his work. Late in his life, he assigned the copyright
Speaker 1: for his Speller to his son William, to the horror
Speaker 1: of his daughters and sons in law. William had tried
Speaker 1: his hand at a bunch of different business ventures that
Speaker 1: never worked out, and he was continually being bailed out
Speaker 1: by his father. The Speller was the most profitable book
Speaker 1: that Webster ever published, so the family was worried that
Speaker 1: William was going to squander away income that they were
Speaker 1: all relying on. Divisions also arose around how Goodrich had
Speaker 1: handled the abridgment and the plagiarism dispute with Worcester. Some
Speaker 1: of the family kind of felt like he had taken
Speaker 1: advantage of Webster in his old age. In eighteen forty one,
Speaker 1: Webster published another version of his dictionary. The Son was
Speaker 1: an American Dictionary of the English Language, corrected and enlarged.
Speaker 1: He died in new Haven, Connecticut two years later on
Speaker 1: May twenty eighth, eighteen forty three, reportedly holding a copy
Speaker 1: of his Speller on his deathbed. He was buried in
Speaker 1: Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut. Today, Webster's dictionary
Speaker 1: is under the name Merriam Webster. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: a lot more about George and Charles Merriam in Part two.
Speaker 1: They opened a printing and bookselling business in Springfield, Massachusetts
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty one, later buying unfinished copies of one
Speaker 1: of Webster's dictionaries and eventually the rights to his work.
Speaker 2: G and C. Merriam Company became a subsidiary of Encyclopedia
Speaker 2: Britannica in nineteen sixty four, and that subsidiary was renamed
Speaker 2: Merriam Webster Incorporated in nineteen eighty two. After we come
Speaker 2: back from a sponsor break, we will talk about Joseph
Speaker 2: Emerson Worcester. Joseph Emerson Worcester was one of fifteen children
Speaker 2: born to Jesse and Sarah Parker Worcester. He was born
Speaker 2: in Bedford, New Hampshire, on August twenty fourth, seventeen eighty four.
Speaker 2: The Worcesters were a farming family, and for a lot
Speaker 2: of his young life Joseph worked on the farm. He
Speaker 2: didn't have access to a lot of, like really good education,
Speaker 2: so he did a lot of study on his own.
Speaker 2: Joseph was twenty one when he entered preparatory school at
Speaker 2: Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and he went on to
Speaker 2: Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut four years later. He
Speaker 2: graduated from Yale in eighteen eleven, the year he turned
Speaker 2: twenty seven. In spite of the limits on their access
Speaker 2: to education, nearly all of the Worcester siblings became teachers.
Speaker 1: For Joseph. This started in Salem, Massachusetts, possibly because he
Speaker 1: had some family there. One of his students was Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Speaker 1: and he became Hawthorne's tutor after he had to leave
Speaker 1: school to recover from an injury.
Speaker 2: Wooster was described as shy and methodical, and as patient
Speaker 2: and kind with his students, but he also had very
Speaker 2: high standards and he really loved doing research. Thomas Wentworth
Speaker 2: Higginson described him as quote want to sit silent, literally
Speaker 2: by the hour, a slumbering volcano of facts and statistics
Speaker 2: while others talked.
Speaker 1: In addition to his work as a teacher, Wooster also
Speaker 1: started writing books to use in schools. His A Geographical
Speaker 1: Dictionary or Universal Gazetteer Ancient and Modern was published in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen, followed by A Gazetteer of the United States
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighteen. His Elements of Geography came out in
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen, and then Sketches of the Earth and Its
Speaker 1: Inhabitants in eighteen twenty three. That same year he became
Speaker 1: a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Speaker 1: Then three years later, so eighteen twenty six, he published
Speaker 1: Elements of History, Ancient and modern accompanied by an historical atlas,
Speaker 1: and then outlines of scripture geography with an atlas. During
Speaker 1: these years, Wooster also moved a couple of times from
Speaker 1: Salem to Andover and then to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Having written
Speaker 1: six books on a range of subjects over the course
Speaker 1: of a decade, including issuing revised editions that we did
Speaker 1: not mention here, Wooster turned his attention to lexicography, or
Speaker 1: the compilation of dictionaries and the principles and practices involved
Speaker 1: with that compilation. As we mentioned earlier, he published an
Speaker 1: abridgment of Samuel Johnson's seventeen fifty five Dictionary Needed that
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty eight, and then a year later he
Speaker 1: was hired to create an abridged version of Webster's eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight American Dictionary of the English Language. That abridgment
Speaker 1: came out in eighteen twenty nine. Wooster put out his
Speaker 1: own comprehensive, pronouncing an Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty. This contained roughly the same number of
Speaker 1: words as Webster's unabridged eighteen twenty eight dictionary, but as
Speaker 1: a book it was shorter. It did not contain etymologies,
Speaker 1: and his definitions tended to be a lot more concise.
Speaker 1: That meant his dictionary was also less expensive than Webster's.
Speaker 1: He also included what came to be known as the
Speaker 1: compromise vowel, a sound in words like fast and dance
Speaker 1: that was between the way a is pronounced in cat
Speaker 1: or hat in the way it's pronounced in father. After
Speaker 1: publishing this dictionary, Worcester went to Europe for several months
Speaker 1: and collected resource materials on philology and lexicography. He got
Speaker 1: back to the US in eighteen thirty one and started
Speaker 1: working as editor for the American Almanac and Repository of
Speaker 1: Useful Knowledge. This was an annual almanac that Worcester edited
Speaker 1: until eighteen forty two. In eighteen thirty four, Webster accused
Speaker 1: Wooster of plagiarism, claiming that Wooster had used material from
Speaker 1: his abridgment of Webster's dictionary in his own work. This
Speaker 1: was the start of the dictionary wars that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about in part two, But we'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and note that Webster directed various people to comb through
Speaker 1: Wooster's work looking for evidence against him, but they found nothing.
Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty five, Worcester published his Elementary Dictionary of
Speaker 1: the English Language that was shorter and simpler than his
Speaker 1: comprehensive Pronouncing an Explanatory Dictionary, and it was meant to
Speaker 1: be used in common schools. Like Worster's previous dictionary. This
Speaker 1: was well reviewed and it sold well, and he was
Speaker 1: able to move into a large set of rented rooms
Speaker 1: in Cambridge, where one of his neighbors was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I ever want to do a
Speaker 1: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow episode, but he sure has come up
Speaker 1: a lot l He is like connective glue of American history,
Speaker 1: I think. On November twenty eighth, eighteen forty one, Worster
Speaker 1: Marian Amy Elizabeth McKean. He was fifty seven and she
Speaker 1: was forty. He bought land and a house next to
Speaker 1: the one where he had rented rooms. Amy's father was
Speaker 1: a professor at Harvard, and she worked with Joseph on
Speaker 1: his future writings. In eighteen forty six, Joseph Worcester published
Speaker 1: his Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language. At
Speaker 1: this point, Norah Webster was dead, he had died three
Speaker 1: years previously, and Wooster's preface to this dictionary included a
Speaker 1: note that none of its spellings or definitions had come
Speaker 1: from Webster. He also, in that material cited Webster as
Speaker 1: one of his sources for pronunciations, alongside British sources like
Speaker 1: Webster is cited in the text of the dictionary, and
Speaker 1: he praised Webster as a quote distinguished American lexicographer. As
Speaker 1: this dictionary was going to print, Wooster was having trouble
Speaker 1: with this site. Sometimes this is described as resulting from cataracts.
Speaker 1: He had a series of surgeries after which he was
Speaker 1: blind in his right eye and had partial sight in
Speaker 1: his left. During his surgeries and recovery, he was really
Speaker 1: not paying attention to what was going on in the news,
Speaker 1: so some years passed before he learned that a huge
Speaker 1: controversy had unfolded in the press, including a scathing review
Speaker 1: of his work, apparently written at the behest of Webster's publishers.
Speaker 1: Worcester also discovered that a publisher in London had put
Speaker 1: out an edition of his own Universal and Critical Dictionary
Speaker 1: of the English Language that said on its title page
Speaker 1: that it was compiled from work by Noah Webster.
Speaker 2: It was not. This was Worcester's own dictionary. This fueled
Speaker 2: additional speculation that Wooster's work was suspect in some way,
Speaker 2: even though he had never personally had any contact with
Speaker 2: this London publisher and just had nothing to do with
Speaker 2: this publisher's franklin inexplicable actions. This is also something we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about a lot more on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: But Worcester found all of this just enormously upsetting. In
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty five, Worcester published a pronouncing, explanatory and synonymous
Speaker 2: Dictionary of the English Language. As its name suggests, this
Speaker 2: one included synonyms, and it also included etymologies. Then in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty he published a four volume Dictionary of the
Speaker 2: English Language. Joseph Emerson Worcester died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on
Speaker 2: October twenty seventh, eighteen sixty five. At that point he
Speaker 2: had been working on annotations for a future version of
Speaker 2: that four volume dictionary. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery,
Speaker 2: which is also in Cambridge. Today, Noah Webster's name is
Speaker 2: almost synonymous with the word dictionary. While people may not
Speaker 2: have heard of Joseph Emerson Worcester at all, but during
Speaker 2: his lifetime. Worcester's dictionaries were really well respected. Sometimes he's
Speaker 2: described as wanting to preserve British pronunciations and usage, but
Speaker 2: that's only somewhat true. He did use British sources in
Speaker 2: his work, but he used American ones as well, and
Speaker 2: he defaulted to British standards when there just wasn't really
Speaker 2: a clear consensus. While Webster had been calling for spelling
Speaker 2: reform and a replacement of British sources with American ones
Speaker 2: and including words coined in the US that had not
Speaker 2: become widely used, Wooster had been carefully creating well researched
Speaker 2: dictionaries that focused on clarity and accuracy and quote the
Speaker 2: prevailing and best usage of this country. Consequently, there were
Speaker 2: a lot of institutions that preferred Worcester's dictionaries, including Harvard
Speaker 2: and the University of Virginia, and he had a lot
Speaker 2: of support. Amongst the very outspoken writers and speakers, one
Speaker 2: was Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said at one point, quote
Speaker 2: mister Wooster's dictionary, on which, as is well known, the
Speaker 2: literary men of this metropolis are, by special statute allowed
Speaker 2: to be sworn in place of the Bible. I think
Speaker 2: that's a joke, but I still like it. Author and
Speaker 2: minister Edward Everett Hale also remarked that the only two
Speaker 2: books that would be needed to establish a new civilization
Speaker 2: would be Shakespeare and Wooster's eighteen sixty Dictionary. So it makes.
Speaker 1: Sense that Webster and later Charles and George Merriam had
Speaker 1: seen Wooster and his work as a threat, and that
Speaker 1: was a big part of the Dictionary wars. And we're
Speaker 1: going to talk all about that next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I know it's a little weird to kind of
Speaker 2: have two parts of two different biographies and then a
Speaker 2: selection of their work, But it also would have been
Speaker 2: weird to like try to interweave it together, and that way,
Speaker 2: I feel like would have been confusing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I have some listener mail. It is from Caitlin.
Speaker 2: The title of this email is John Nix and his
Speaker 2: Four Sons, and Caitlyn wrote, Hi, Tracy and Holly. One
Speaker 2: detail of Wednesday's Nicks versus head in episode caught in
Speaker 2: my brain immediately John Nix's four sons and their shared
Speaker 2: middle initial of W. I had to know if they
Speaker 2: shared the same name. I started digging into genealogical records
Speaker 2: and found John Junior in a notable New Yorker's eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety six to eighteen ninety nine, listed with the middle
Speaker 2: name William. John Senior died in eighteen ninety five, very
Speaker 2: helpful to avoid generational confusion there. John was the only
Speaker 2: Nixon that edition, though onward went the quest. An article
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn Life from the seventeenth anniversary of the company
Speaker 2: notes quote a rather singular fact relating to the fore
Speaker 2: men who constitute the firm is that the middle initial
Speaker 2: of each is W, which I find hilarious worth commenting on,
Speaker 2: but not worth saying what it initializes. Using John Senior's
Speaker 2: death year, I found an obituary that mentioned his birth year,
Speaker 2: which was enough information to find someone on ancestry who
Speaker 2: had traced that branch of the family tree. So John William,
Speaker 2: George Washington, Frank Wesley, and Robert Williamson. There seemed to
Speaker 2: be several other siblings, including a brother, Harry w between
Speaker 2: George and Frank in age. Harry disappears between the eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy and eighteen eighty censuses, and there's a burial record
Speaker 2: for someone of that name and birth year for eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy three. So not only is each w a different name,
Speaker 2: but not a single Willard in the bunch, unless maybe
Speaker 2: Harry an answer to a question that has zero impact
Speaker 2: to the story being told, but which was satisfying to
Speaker 2: hunt down anyway, Caitlyn. Okay, thank you Caitlyn so much.
Speaker 2: This is literally the exact kind of rabbit hole I
Speaker 2: will go down and have been known to go down
Speaker 2: in the course of researching this show. But it was
Speaker 2: not a rabbit hole I had time for this time.
Speaker 2: It was it was an episode that was like, get
Speaker 2: it going, got get a move on, stop wasting time.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much Caitlin for doing that and
Speaker 2: allowing me the pleasure of following following along with that,
Speaker 2: with that journey, I think I think they've written to
Speaker 2: us before. I'm pretty sure Caitlyn's name is jumping out
Speaker 2: to me as familiar. So thank you so much, Caitlin.
Speaker 2: Thank you for this email, Thank you for doing all
Speaker 2: of that digging. Maybe at some point I will find
Speaker 2: some other weird question that I actually do have time
Speaker 2: to jump down a rabbit hole about. If you would
Speaker 2: like to send us a note about this or any
Speaker 2: other podcast or a history podcast atiheartradio dot com or
Speaker 2: on social media ad Missed in History That's for You'll
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