Noah Webster

WEBSTER, NOAH (1758-1843). —Lexicographer, etc., born at Hartford, Connecticut, and educated at Yale. His long life was spent in unremitting diligence as teacher, lawyer, and man of letters. His great work is his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), for which he prepared himself by 10 years' study of philology. Many abridgments of it have appeared, and in 1866 a new and enlarged edition was published. His Elementary Spelling Book is believed to have attained a circulation of 70,000,000 copies. He also published A Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language (1807), and many other works.