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The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture
The Forgotten Founding Father Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture Author:Joshua Kendall American's own The Professor and the Madman: a story of Noah Webster, author of American English. — Noah Webster's name is now synonymous with the dictionary he created, but his story is not nearly so ubiquitous. — Webster hobnobbed with various Founding Fathers and was a young confidant of George Washington and Ben Franklin. He sta... more »rted America's first daily newspaper, predating Alexander Hamilton's New York Post. His "blue-backed speller" for schoolchildren sold millions of copies and influenced early copyright law. But perhaps most important, Webster was an ardent supporter of a unified, definitively American culture, distinct from the British, at a time when the United States of America were anything but unified-and his dictionary of American English is a testament to that.« less