One might well assume that Noah Webster (1758–1843), America’s most famous lexicographer, was a cloistered pedant or quiet scholar poring over books and manuscripts. In fact, he became, over the course of his long life, a quarrelsome, legalistic, grudge-holding man—at times for good reason. Soon after writing an English grammar in 1784, he saw an expatriate American, Lindley Murray, become the best-selling grammarian of the 19th century—selling more than 13 million grammars at a time when Webster struggled to find a publisher...

Source: Wall Street Journal May 27, 2019 20:15 UTC