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Film, Video The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture

Event video

Transcript: TEXT

About this Item

Title

  • The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture

Summary

  • Noah Webster's name is synonymous with the dictionary he created, but his story is not nearly so well-known. Webster hobnobbed with various Founding Fathers and was a young confidant of George Washington and Ben Franklin. He started 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. Joshua Kendall has written an absorbing and insightful account of how American English came to be codified in his new book.

Names

  • Library of Congress

Created / Published

  • Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress, 2011-06-02.

Headings

  • -  Biography, History
  • -  Education
  • -  Government, Law
  • -  Literature

Notes

  • -  Classification: Language and Literature.
  • -  Joshua Kendall.
  • -  Recorded on 2011-06-02.
  • -  Kids, Families.
  • -  Researchers.
  • -  Teachers.

Medium

  • 1 online resource

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 2021688691

Online Format

  • video
  • image
  • online text

Additional Metadata Formats

Rights & Access

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Credit Line: Library of Congress

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Library Of Congress. The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, -06-02, 2011. Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021688691/.

APA citation style:

Library Of Congress. (2011) The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, -06-02. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021688691/.

MLA citation style:

Library Of Congress. The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, -06-02, 2011. Video. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2021688691/>.