James Russell Lowell

(1819-1891)

Ancestor of two twentieth-century American poets, Amy Lowell and Robert Lowell, James Russell Lowell belonged to an aristocratic class and a conservative poetic tradition.

Like John Greenleaf Whittier and many other New England writers of his time, Lowell was a man of strong political and social convictions. He expressed himself forcefully in articles, essays, and poems.

By 1848, when Lowell was only twenty-nine, he had published the four books of poetry that would establish his literary reputation. One of these was A Fable for Critics, a collection of witty, satirical verses about contemporary writers (including one named James Russell Lowell).

He succeeded Longfellow as Smith Professor of French and Spanish at Harvard, where he taught for more than twenty years. One of Lowell's greatest poems, "Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration," was composed in 1865 to honor the graduates of Harvard who had died in the Civil War.

An American Spelling Book

Enter Noah Webster, a young schoolmaster from Connecticut. Webster was looking for a way to finance his legal education, and he was also passionately dedicated to the cause of American English. To help advance these two causes, Webster wrote a spelling book, which he first published in 1783, when he was twenty-five. The spelling book turned out to be a major force in the drive for American linguistic independence. Over the generations, The American Spelling Book was used in numerous editions, and over a hundred million copies of it were sold.

Webster reasoned that accurate and uniform American spelling would lead to uniform American speech, and that uniformity in speech would “reconcile” the people of America to each other.

Webster's first dictionary, published in 1806.

The American Dictionary of the English Language was an incredible accomplishment for one person. His 1806 dictionary had defined 28,000 words and indicated their pronunciation. The 1828 dictionary defined 70,000 words and provided etymologies as well as pronunciations. This was the first dictionary to include Americanisms.

The American Dictionary a\so included the new American meanings of older English words such as congress, court, and plantation, and settled for all time the changes in word endings that distinguish American from British usage: -er for -re (center rather than centre); -or for -our (favor rather than favour); -c for -ck (music rather than musick); -ck for -que (check rather than cheque); -ize for -/'se (legalize rather than legalise); and -ler for -ller (traveler rather than traveller). The 1828 dictionary decided firmly that Americans would spell and pronounce the name of the newly produced metal aluminum (the British favored aluminium, like sodium and potassium). We say skedute rather than schedule because Webster thought the pronunciation of schedule should follow the example of school.

For all of its eccentricities, then, the American Dictionary was a landmark in the development of American English.