Lot 131•
WEBSTER (NOAH) An American Dictionary, 2 vol., FIRST EDITION, New York, Printed by Hezekiah Howe for S. Converse, 1828
Ending from 19 November 2025, 12:00 GMT
Online, London, Knightsbridge£4,000 - £6,000
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WEBSTER (NOAH)
An American Dictionary, 2 vol., FIRST EDITION, engraved portrait frontispiece of the author by A.H. Durand after S.F.B. Morse, tissue guard, with the "Additions and Corrections" leaf at end of volume 2, light spotting to frontispiece, later morocco, with bookbinder's ticket of W. Talcott & Bros., Hartford, Conn. inside upper covers, gilt lettered on spine, soe abrasions to sides, short tear to lower section of one joint [Grolier American 36; PMM 291; Sabin 102335] 4to (290 x 230mm.), New York, Printed by Hezekiah Howe for S. Converse, 1828
Footnotes
FIRST EDITION of the dictionary "which almost at once became, and has remained, the standard English dictionary in the United States" (PMM) and the "most ambitious publication ever undertaken, up to that time, upon American soil" (Grolier).
Webster was "an ardent nationalist and he wanted to stress the political separation from Britain by the cultivation of a separate American language" (PMM), writing the near seventy thousand definitions himself.