Noah Webster's literary product--wide in its variety, singular in its spirit--spanned more than half a century. First producing textbooks designed to instill patriotism in schoolchildren, later editing periodicals that urged a young nation to shun foreign influence, and finally ignoring critics to pour some twenty years' devoted labor into his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), Webster made Americanism his leitmotiv. Though only a few years of his long career were devoted to journalism, during the party press period Webster equaled his contemporaries' editorial power while refusing to copy their partisan extremism. But his most enduring influence encompassed the entire publishing field, where generations of writers and editors were to benefit from his pioneering work as a lexicographer and his tireless fight for improved copyright protections.

Born on 16 October 1758 in his parents' Connecticut farmhouse, Noah was the fourth of five children of Noah Webster, Sr., and Mercy Steele...