An American Dictionary of the English Language.

WEBSTER, Noah.

$18,500.00

Item Number: 143614

New York: Published by S. Converse. Printed by Hezekiah Howe - New Haven, 1828.

First edition of pioneering lexicographer Noah Webster’s monumental American Dictionary, arguably the most popular American book ever published and one of only 2500 copies printed. Thick quarto, bound in three quarter polished calf over marbled boards with morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, engraved portrait of Webster after Samuel F.B. Morse, unpaginated text in triple columns, pages untrimmed and hence a copy once in boards, the 44 preliminary leaves in Vol. I containing Webster’s preface on the history of the dictionary, his introductory dissertation, “on the origin, history and connection of the languages of western Asia and of Europe. With the additional leaf in Vol. II, “Additions and Corrections” which is often lacking, and without the “Advertisement” lead, as issued. Copies in boards did not have the “Advertisement” leaf bound in, as did many copies in calf. In the copies in boards, the leaf was laid in to some but was never originally bound in. Only 2500 copies were printed. With some spotting to the text and dampstain entering the margin of the frontispiece. In very good condition. A sharp example.

In 1807 Webster began compiling a fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-eight years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France, and at the University of Cambridge. His book contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in a published dictionary before. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings, replacing colour with color, substituting wagon for waggon, and printing center instead of center. He also added American words, like skunk and squash, that did not appear in British dictionaries. At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828, registering the copyright on April 14. Webster did all this in an effort to standardize the American language. “This dictionary, which almost at once became, and has remained, the standard English dictionary in the United States, was the end-product of a stream of spelling books, grammars, readers, and dcitionaries which flowed from the pen of the industrious Noah Webster....Webster’s great dictionary, all the 70,000 entries of which he wrote with his own hand, has been reprinted and brought up to date innumerable times....the book marked a definite advance in modern lexicography, as it included many non-literary terms and paid great attention to the language actually spoken. Moreover, his definitions of the meaning of words were accurate and concise...and have for the greater part stood the test of time superbly well” (Printing and the Mind of Man). "As a whole, Webster’s American Dictionary was a scholarly achievement of the first order, richly deserving of its great reputation at home and abroad” (DAB). With definitions for “some 70,000 words—15,000 more than any previous English lexicon… Although only 2500 copies of the first edition were printed, the work established Webster as a lexicographer of international repute” (Lathem, 76 United Statesiana 9).