Websters Old Spelling Book Containing by Webster Noah (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 144 pages; Contents clean and complete, housed in original wood boards covered in blue paper, paper worn (boards exposed in places), leather spine worn away, front board detached, lacks blank ffep; needs rebacking. Bookplate of former owner on fep "E.W. Phillips" D.D. Fisk, Printer. OCLC 476492706 Skeel 256a Illustrated with numeroud wood engravings. Noah Webster Jr. (1758 - 1843) was an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education." His "blue-backed speller" books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read. "In the 'Speller' Noah Webster sought to free American language from the "pedantry" of English forms and traditions. He believed that the American people were the proper arbiters of correct speech, and that spelling should be simplified and brought into better agreement with pronunciation. For Webster these changes in language were only part of a larger cultural transformation that would cut America free from what he saw as a corrupt and failing English/European mindset. His American Revolution was not just about changing political and economic institutions, it was about shaping a new American identity. Noah Webster's incredibly popular book shows how the revolutionary spirit, once unleashed, can push change in a variety of directions." [from The Blue-Backed Speller Forgotten Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution, 2014].

Small 8vo, pp. 144; wood-engraved illustrations throughout; contemporary brown paper-backed blue boards (some water stains), shelf wear, wooden boards exposed in various places, 1/4-inch loss at spine head, hinges weak; foxing, pages uniformly toned; interior in over all good condition. 1817 copyright application printed on t.p. verso. Skeel 256a.