Archives by date

You are browsing the site archives by date.

Joshua Kendall on Noah Webster — Minnesota Public Radio

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/04/19/midmorning2/

Noah Webster, The Father of Public Health Research

Webster was more than a compiler of words.   He also was a fervent number-cruncher who authored the world’s first scientific survey.   Here’s a recent story that I wrote for The Daily: http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/04/12/041211-opinions-history-yellow-fever-kendall-1-3/

My Nation Story on WC Minor’s Career as an American Lexicographer

http://www.thenation.com/article/159277/minor-exception WC Minor, the “madman” of Simon Winchester’s compelling narrative about the making of the OED, was no amateur lexciographer, as historians have long assumed.   Three days before the start of the Civil War, he signed a contact to work on a major revision of Webster’s American Dictionary.  And as I show, based on my archival research […]

The 1864 Edition of Webster’s — The 19th Century’s Best English Dictionary

In a recent story for the Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine, I discuss the making of this landmark dictionary — the first major revision of Webster’s after Noah Webster’s death.   http://magazine.jhu.edu/2011/02/redefining-websters/

Noah Webster and “the Madman”

In my Psychology Today Blog, I have recently discussed the career of James Gates Percival, the brilliant, but disturbed poet who was Webster’s lone assistant on the dictionary.  Percival bears a striking resemblance to William Chester Minor, the American-born lexicographer who helped James Murray on the OED. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/adventures-in-biography