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The people's book: making, selling, and reading reference works in nineteenth-century America

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The people's book: making, selling, and reading reference works in nineteenth-century America

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THE PEOPLE’S BOOK:
MAKING, SELLING, AND READING REFERENCE WORKS IN
NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA

by

Ann K. Johnson

A Dissertation Presented to
The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
University of Southern California
Department of History
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

August 2014

Copyright 2014 Ann K. Johnson

For Joseph and Elizabeth
iii
Acknowledgements

I could not have completed this project without the help of so many
different people. From the very beginning, Kathy and Jim Johnson have been my
biggest fans and champions. Jennifer Ayres at Castilleja School and John K. Roth
at Claremont McKenna College encouraged me to pursue my love of American
history. Helena Wall at Pomona College oversaw a very early version of this
project and taught me what it was that historians actually do.
Madeline Kripke is one of the few people who understands my passion
for dictionaries. She not only opened up her amazing collection to me, but also
allowed me to pick her brain about arcane bits of dictionary history. Ronald J.
Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray generously shared their own research on
antebellum American readers with me. I never would have found so many
instances of reader response to reference books without their assistance. The
Massachusetts Historical Society provided me with a research fellowship at the
time I needed it the very most. I thank Conrad Wright and Kate Viens for being
so welcoming.
At the University of Southern California, I had the opportunity to work
with a number of amazing scholars. Deborah Harkness, Steve Ross, and Judith
Bennett helped me become a better writer and storyteller. I am particularly
grateful for my incredible dissertation committee. Thomas Gustafson was a
thoughtful and understanding reader. Phil Ethington is one of the smartest
people I have ever met. Our conversations about the digital humanities pushed
me to think critically about the modern-day connections to my project. Karen
Halttunen shepherded this dissertation through more twists and turns than she

iv
probably could have ever imagined. Through it all, she believed in me and my
abilities as a scholar. Her many suggestions, both large and small, have
immeasurably improved this work.
Many years ago I took a graduate level class at Brown University on the
history of the book, taught by Bob Gross of the University of Connecticut. Since
that time, Bob has continued to serve as a mentor and sounding board, even from
thousands of miles away. His insightful comments have shaped this project in
fundamental ways. I cannot thank him enough for his support.
Finally, Will Brucher listened to me talk about dictionaries and
encyclopedias day in and day out for years. This dissertation would not have
been possible without him by my side.

v
Abstract

This dissertation traces the major changes in compiling, publishing,
marketing, distributing, and using reference books in nineteenth-century
America. Focusing specifically on dictionaries and encyclopedias, I discuss a
range of books, from Noah Webster’s famous American Dictionary of the English
Language (1828) to George Ripley and Charles A. Dana’s less well-known New
American Cyclopaedia (1858-1863) to Isaac K. Funk’s Standard Dictionary (1893-
1895). I show how, between 1840 and 1880, the reference book became, in effect,
“the people’s book.” Where as early nineteenth-century dictionaries and
encyclopedias were, for the most part, literary works designed for an educated
audience, by the late nineteenth century, these books had embraced popular
culture and a wide readership. The key agents of change in this transformation
were American publishers, who saw the potential for a mass market for books of
reference before such a market even existed. At the same time, their efforts were
made possible by a number of important developments in American society
during this period, including technological advances, improvements in
transportation, and the expansion of schooling.
Drawing on letters, diaries, newspapers, magazines, canvassing books, as
well as reference books, this dissertation reveals how dictionaries and
encyclopedias can help us better understand larger trends in the history of
American education. Yet it also challenges a historiography that argues that the
creation and use of reference books was a response to “information overload.”
My central historical claim is that reference books, originally designed to set

vi
standards from above by learned authorities, ultimately contributed to the
shattering of that very authority by promoting the popularization of information.

vii
Table of Contents

Introduction 1
Chapter One: To Glean and Preserve 14
Chapter Two: Wisdom for the Masses in a Nutshell 50
Chapter Three: A Peripatetic Enterprise 99
Chapter Four: Knowledge at Hand 143
Conclusion 174
Epilogue 177
Appendix 184
Bibliography 190

1
Introduction

“America is the land of dictionaries as well as of machinery” remarked
one critic in 1890.
1
The comparison was more apt than the writer himself knew.
By the late nineteenth century, dictionaries and encyclopedias reached broadly
throughout American culture. It had not always been this way. In the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the high cost of dictionaries and
encyclopedias meant that they were mostly purchased and used by scholars,
lawyers, physicians, and other elites. The first dictionary printed in the United
States was British compiler William Perry’s Royal Standard English Dictionary.
Printed in 1788 by Massachusetts bookseller Isaiah Thomas, Thomas dedicated
his work to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose members
included Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Sold for seven shillings
bound, the book was out of reach for the vast majority of Americans.
2
In 1828,
when Connecticut lexicographer Noah Webster published his landmark
American Dictionary, his audience was not much different. At twenty dollars for
two volumes, the work was pricey, even for the most well-off. Although Webster
claimed he had compiled “a dictionary suited to the people of the United States,”
he was less interested in recording American English as it was actually spoken
than he was in giving the language “regularity and consistency in its forms.”
3
He
would set the standards for language in the United States, and he expected the
rest of the country to follow.

1
Critic: A Weekly Review of Literature and the Arts, November 1, 1890, 213.
2
Massachusetts Spy, March 27, 1788. On the cost and affordability of books in eighteenth-
century America, see Elizabeth Carol Reilly and David D. Hall, “Customers and the Market for
Books,” in A History of the Book in America, vol. 1, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, ed. Hugh
Armory and David D. Hall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 387-399.
3
Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1 (New York: S.
Converse, 1828), n.p.

2
This dissertation explores the history of reference books in the nineteenth-
century United States. Focusing specifically on dictionaries and encyclopedias, I
detail the process by which reference books went from being learned tools for a
relative few to becoming mass-produced books designed “for the people.” I
begin in 1828 with the publication of Webster’s American Dictionary. I end in 1895
with completion of Lutheran minister Isaac K. Funk’s Standard Dictionary. I show
how, between 1840 and 1880, thanks largely to the efforts of a number of
enterprising and determined publishers, reference books became consumer
goods that catered to an emerging mass market and reflected the mass culture in
which they were also a part. I argue that reference books, originally designed to
set standards from above by learned authorities, eventually contributed to the
shattering of that very authority by promoting the popularization of information.
In many ways, the history of reference books in the nineteenth century is
part of a larger story about an industrializing America. By the time Webster
published his American Dictionary, the American economy was already
developing at a rapid pace. Around mid-century, technological advances and the
rise of the factory system enabled American businesses to manufacture more
goods than ever before. A revolution in transportation, thanks in large part to the
building of canals and rail lines, made it possible for these products to reach a
national market.
4
The book trade was only a small part of the overall American
economy, but it experienced many of the same changes as other industries. The
mechanization of printing, papermaking, binding and typecasting, as well as the
widespread adoption of stereotyping and later electrotyping made it possible to

4
On this transformation, see Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and
Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007 [1982]); Walter Licht, Industrializing
America: The Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

3
produce books more quickly and cheaply. Improved transportation and
communication made the efficient distribution of books a reality. As a result, the
number of publishers grew substantially. By the late nineteenth century, small
family publishing firms had been replaced by large-scale corporations.
5
In
addition to enabling the mass production of reference books, industrialization
also generated an increased demand for these works, as Americans sought to
better understand the many technological changes that were happening all
around them.
The proliferation of reference books is also tied to the history of education.
The nineteenth century saw the widespread expansion of schools and the
proliferation of educationally-focused institutions like libraries, lyceums and
museums.
6
Beginning during the antebellum period, an increasing number of
Americans sought out what they called “useful knowledge” as a means of self-
improvement.
7
They believed that the acquisition of knowledge could contribute
to their moral and spiritual growth, and could even yield economic benefits. The
self-culture movement in America had religious, and in particular, Unitarian,
roots; however it quickly appealed to a wider, more secular audience. The

5
For an overview of this transformation, see Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen
W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds., A History of the Book in America, vol. 3, The Industrial
Book, 1840-1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
6
On schools, see Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American
Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1983); Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The
National Experience, 1783-1876 (New York: Harper Colophon, 1980). On lyceums, see Donald M.
Scott, “The Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,”
Journal of American History 66, no. 4 (March 1980): 791-809; Carl Bode, The American Lyceum: Town
Meeting of the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956). On museums, see David R.
Brigham, Public Culture in the Early Republic: Peale’s Museum and Its Audience (Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995).
7
Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self (New York: Oxford University Press,
2009 [1997]); Joseph F. Kett, The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to
Adult Education in America, 1750-1990 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Thomas Augst,
The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2003).

4
“diffusion of useful knowledge” soon became the slogan of the age.
8
Although
reasons varied, one thing is clear: nineteenth-century Americans were gripped
with a need to know.
Finally, the history of reference books also speaks to larger trends within
the history of knowledge and information during this period. In the eighteenth
century, as Richard D. Brown has argued, public information was scarce, and
controlled by a small group of elites. By the mid-nineteenth century however, the
information environment was much richer, and individuals had many more
choices when it came to getting their information.
9
Indeed, nineteenth-century
Americans eagerly sought out information of all different sorts to help them
make sense of a rapidly industrializing, urbanizing, and expanding country.
Geographical information from atlases made it possible for a mobile population
to get to where they needed to go. Commercial and shipping information from
newspapers enabled the growth of businesses. Political information from
pamphlets assisted Americans in being active and engaged citizens. Information
on language from dictionaries taught Americans to spell and speak in uniform
ways. Information on history, philosophy, and natural science from
encyclopedias helped men and women better understand the growing American
“empire.”
10
Of course, these are just a few examples. Publishers of dictionaries
and encyclopedias benefited from this demand for information, and ultimately

8
See, for example, William Ellery Channing, “The Present Age: An Address Delivered
Before the Mercantile Library Company of Philadelphia, May 11, 1841,” in The Works of William E.
Channing, vol. 6 (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1883), 150.
9
Richard D. Brown, Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-
1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
10
See, for example, Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Ann Laura Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire:
Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Amy
Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, ed., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1993).

5
created a distinct branch of American industrial capacity: the knowledge
industry.
In the early nineteenth century, the leading lexicographers in America,
Noah Webster and Joseph E. Worcester, were amateur scholars whose interests
and writings ranged widely across disciplines. By the last third of the nineteenth
century, however, the growth of intellectual specialization in colleges and
universities across the United States effectively eliminated the polymath of the
earlier period. The Ph.D., which became the standard advanced degree in
America during this period, was in fact a recognition that the student was an
expert in a single field. On the one hand, late nineteenth-century dictionaries and
encyclopedias reflected the movement towards specialization, by employing
academics to focus on specific topics within the work. On the other hand, as John
Higham has noted, reference books worked also to offset to this trend by
introducing these specialties to a wide variety of readers.
11

Reference books were just one of many storehouses of knowledge that
flourished during the nineteenth century. But while work on libraries, museums,
and scrapbooks has proliferated in recent years, reference books have been
mostly ignored by historians and literary scholars. And although the history of
the book in the United States has become a thriving field, scholars have largely
focused their attention on novels, despite the fact that many reference books,
particularly dictionaries, had higher sales figures. In 1860, for example, Harper
Brothers estimated that they and other firms had sold 250,000 copies of the

11
John Higham, “The Matrix of Specialization” in The Organization of Knowledge in Modern
America, 1860-1920, ed. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1979), 3-18.

6
abridged version of Webster’s Dictionary.
12
By 1867, the Riverside Press was
printing one hundred tons of Webster’s American Dictionary a year.
13

The only recent work on American encyclopedias is Robert D. Arner’s
1991 book on Thomas Dobson, the publisher of the first American edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. Arner’s study offers an important examination of this
individual encyclopedia, but does not place the book in any sort of broader
context.
14
Scholars have been more interested in the dictionaries and spellers of
Connecticut lexicographer Noah Webster.
15
In many ways, this focus on Webster
is understandable. Webster looms large in American history. He has been called
everything from “schoolmaster to America” to, most recently, “the forgotten
founding father.”
16
But focusing so narrowly on the life and work of one man
makes it difficult to assess the ultimate impact of his books on American culture.
Furthermore, older studies that discuss dictionaries in the United States end
sometime between Webster’s death in 1843 and the Civil War.
17
This is
particularly problematic because, as this dissertation will show, Webster’s
American Dictionary did not reach a mass audience until after Webster’s death,

12
Eugene Exman, The Brothers Harper (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 166-167.
13
Ellen B. Ballou, The Building of the House: Houghton Mifflin’s Formative Years (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970), 97.
14
Robert D. Arner, Dobson’s Encyclopaedia: The Publisher, Text, and Publication of America’s
First Britannica, 1789-1803 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
15
E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage: Noah Webster’s Blue-Back Speller (Hamden,
CT: Archon Book, 1983); David Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary (London:
McFarland, 2000).
16
Harry R. Warfel, Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America (New York: Macmillan, 1936);
Joshua Kendall, The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an
American Culture (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012).
17
See, for example, Eva Mae Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language Before
1861 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1979). One exception to this is Kenneth Cmiel’s study of
popular speech during this period, which discusses later nineteenth-century dictionaries.
Kenneth Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence: The Fight over Popular Speech in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: William Morrow, 1990).

7
when it was placed in the able hands of the Springfield publishers George and
Charles Merriam.
Reference books have not been given such short shrift by early modern
Europeanists. These scholars have led the way in arguing for a re-evaluation of
these texts. Richard Yeo, Ann M. Blair, Mary Franklin-Brown, and others have
shown that understanding how reference books were compiled and used is just
as important as understanding the content they actually contained.
18
In many
ways, my project complements and extends the work of these scholars. However,
I depart most significantly from Blair and others in that I argue against the
concept of “information overload,” and that reference books were responses to
such a condition. The term “information overload” is a modern one, dating to
1962.
19
But recent scholars of Europe and the United States have used it to
describe what men and women were experiencing in many different centuries
and in many different contexts. Ellen Gruber Garvey, for example, has argued
that the growing popularity of scrapbooks in the nineteenth-century United
States was a result of “information overload.”
20
I, on the other hand, argue that
nineteenth-century Americans were eager for information of all kinds and on all
subjects. Reference books promised objective, reliable, and up-to-date
information that Americans could use in their chosen profession, employ in the
education of their children, or display on their shelves as a sign of middle-class
respectability.

18
Richard Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions, Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing
Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010); Mary
Franklin-Brown, Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2012).
19
R.L. Meier, A Communications Theory of Urban Growth (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1962).
20
Ellen Gruber Garvey, Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the
Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

8
Because this project focuses on a very large and diverse category—
reference books—some explanation must be offered about my use of terms and
the parameters of my study. Throughout this dissertation I use the term
“information,” which, as other scholars have noted, is a tricky term, and a word
we too often take for granted. In my use of the term, I generally follow the
definition given by nineteenth-century lexicographers themselves. In his 1828
Dictionary of American English, Noah Webster defined the word as “intelligence;
notice, news or advice communicated by word or writing” or “knowledge
derived from reading or instruction.”
21
Over sixty years later, this definition had
not changed much. In 1893, Isaac K. Funk’s Standard Dictionary defined
information as “knowledge acquired, derived, or inculcated, as by observation,
or by reading and study, or in conversation” or “timely or specific knowledge
respecting some matter of interest or inquiry.”
22
But I also speak of information
in what Geoffrey Nunberg calls “the abstract sense,” in which the word stands
for “stuff present in the world, disconnected from the situations it is about.”
23

This sense of the word is widely used today. For example, we speak of
information in the abstract sense when we use the phrases “Information Age” or
“information overload.” For the most part I use the term information in contrast
to the term knowledge. Webster defined knowledge as “acquaintance with any
fact or person,” or “learning; illumination of the mind.”
24
The Standard similarly
defined the word as “Any fact or truth, or the aggregate of facts, truths,
principles, and special or general information, acquired or retained by the

21
Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1 (New York: Sherman
Converse, 1828).
22
Isaac K. Funk, ed., Standard Dictionary, vol. 1 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1893).
23
Geoffrey Nunberg, “Farewell to the information age,” The Future of the Book, ed.
Geoffrey Nunberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 111.
24
Webster, vol. 2.

9
mind.”
25
The distinction between information and knowledge is important,
especially when it comes to discussing dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Information, as Alexander Welsh has argued, “is latent knowledge,” that can be
stored and retrieved. It does not become valuable until it is actually used by the
reader in some way.
26

I also use the term “reference book” or “book of reference” to describe the
compendia of information published during the nineteenth century. According
to the Oxford English Dictionary Third Edition (September 2009), the word dates
back to the late eighteenth century. In order to avoid repetition, I sometimes use
the term “reference work” which according to the OED Third Edition was being
used in the United States as early as 1839. In the epilogue, I use the term
“reference work” exclusively, as the current definition has expanded to include
not just printed works, but electronic resources as well.
Of course, many different texts can be considered reference works, from
dictionaries to cookbooks to train schedules to husbandry guides. I focus on two
types of general reference books in particular: dictionaries and encyclopedias. I
chose these works because they appealed to the broadest swath of readers:
young and old, men and women, rich and poor, students and professionals.
While much of the scholarship on dictionaries and encyclopedias has tended to
study these sub-genres separately, there are many reasons why looking at these
texts together makes sense, especially for the period under consideration here.
As Tom McArthur has pointed out, from the very beginning, these genres were
not necessarily thought of as distinct entities. Compilations produced in Europe

25
Funk, vol. 1.
26
Alexander Welsh, George Eliot and Blackmail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1985), 44.

10
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries straddled the line between what
we today think of as a dictionary and an encyclopedia.
27
In addition,
lexicographers have long noted that a defining feature of American dictionaries
in the nineteenth century was that they were encyclopedic in nature.
28
Likewise,
many encyclopedias defined words or called themselves dictionaries. While the
standard definition of an encyclopedia is that it is a book about things where as
the dictionary is a book about words, these distinctions were blurred in the
nineteenth century. Joseph E. Worcester, in his Dictionary of the English Language
(1860), called dictionaries and encyclopedias synonyms.
29
Even today, scholars
consider Webster’s American Dictionary to be both an encyclopedia and a
dictionary because of its thorough entries.
30

Other limits were necessary in order to prevent this study from being
encyclopedic itself. While I attempt to cover the history of a wide variety of
American dictionaries and encyclopedias, my coverage is not exhaustive. Those
looking for a bibliography of American encyclopedias should turn to S. Padraig
Walsh, Anglo-American General Encyclopedia, 1703-1967 (1968). For American
dictionaries, see Arthur G. Kennedy, A Bibliography of Writings on the English
Language, from the Beginning of Printing to the End of 1922 (1961). Although my
focus is on reference books printed in the United States, I do discuss British

27
McArthur even argues that the term “lexicography” can be used for both dictionaries
and encyclopedias. He proposes that “micro-lexicography” be used to describe wordbooks and
“macro-lexicography” be used to describe compendia of knowledge. Tom McArthur, Worlds of
Reference: Lexicography, Learning and Language from the Clay Tablet to the Computer (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 101-109.
28
See, for example, Harold Whitehall, “The English Language,” Webster’s New World
Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1960), xxxiii.
29
Joseph E. Worcester, A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Hickling, Swan, and
Brewer, 1860).
30
University of Chicago Library, Encyclopedism from Pliny to Borges (Chicago: University
of Chicago Library, 1990), 19; Robert Collison, Encyclopaedias: Their History Throughout the Ages
(New York: Hafner, 1964), 183.

11
works that were printed and sold in America, such as the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. Finally, because my focus is on the role of reference books within
American culture, this dissertation is not a detailed study nor analysis of the
actual content of nineteenth-century dictionaries and encyclopedias (though I do
examine content when relevant).
Each chapter of “The People’s Book” concentrates on a particular aspect of
what historian Robert Darnton has called “the communications circuit.”
31
By
organizing my chapters in this way, instead of strictly chronologically, my goal is
for readers to get a better sense of how the increasing application of industrial
methods shaped how reference books were produced, marketed, distributed,
and read. I begin my story, in chapter one, with a focus on the compilers of
reference books. During the 1820s and 1830s, compiling was essentially an
artisanal effort. Learned men like Noah Webster and Joseph E. Worcester, with
the help of a few (often uncredited) assistants, labored for years to create
scholarly works that were generally conservative in nature. This individual effort
imbued these books with a sense of authority that was appealing to readers.
Between 1840 and 1880, however, reference books began being produced on an
industrial scale. Publishers provided compilers with the capital necessary to
embark on huge projects. Compilers themselves became editors-in-chief who
oversaw large staffs and arranged for the increasingly minute division of labor.
The credibility of these works came to rest on the specialized expertise of the
many men and women involved in the process. At the same time, these later
compilers also began to tailor their work to popular tastes.

31
Robert Darnton, “What Is the History of Books?,” Daedalus 111, no. 3 (1982): 65-83.

12
Chapter two examines the publishers of reference books, and looks at the
many methods used to market dictionaries and encyclopedias to a mass market
of readers. Operating in an increasingly competitive marketplace, publishers
realized that in order to remain profitable, they needed to create demand for
their products. Between 1840 and 1880 they began making significant changes to
their books, providing more up-to-date content and adding new features, such as
illustrations and indexes. In so doing, publishers undermined the very idea of an
authoritative reference book. They also contributed to the problem that reference
books were supposed to help solve: the instability of information in a society
where knowledge was increasing at a rapid pace.
Chapter three looks at how reference books actually reached the people. I
show how, beginning in the 1840s, reference book publishers came to rely on
small armies of traveling salesmen to get their books to readers in cities and
towns across the United States. To do this they employed a number of new
management techniques, from creating standardized kits for salesmen to
contracting with general agencies to oversee agents. The use of these traveling
salesmen made it easier for publishers to reach their traditional customers, such
as libraries and schools, as well as their new target market, families.
Chapter four focuses on how readers used and thought about dictionaries
and encyclopedias during this period. I show how, between 1840 and 1880,
readers learned to use dictionaries and encyclopedias as tools that could help
them find specific pieces of information quickly and easily as opposed to learned
works that would educate them about the English language or the “circle of
knowledge” more generally. Indeed, reference books enabled children and
adults to find their own answers to questions, and in effect, become their own

13
authorities. Although reference books had long been used in schools, I also
explore how, by the 1880s, the home had become an important site for reading
dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Finally, a brief epilogue meditates on how dictionaries and encyclopedias
in the twentieth-first century represent a continuation of this story. I look
particularly at the production of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, as it is
the most widely used encyclopedia today. Wikipedia’s structure is highly
decentralized, with no single editor-in-chief. Its many unpaid anonymous
contributors are spread out around the globe, each contributing to the project in
small, specialized ways. Although there are many critics of the project, there is
no doubt that Wikipedia has helped to broaden access to information on a
variety of topics, from politics, to history, to science, to popular culture. Indeed,
thanks in large part to Wikipedia, the democratization of knowledge has been
hailed as a defining feature of our age. “The People’s Book” reveals this
development’s nineteenth-century roots.

14
Chapter One
To Glean and Preserve

In 1825, after twenty years of tireless labor, the Connecticut lexicographer
Noah Webster finally completed the manuscript of his greatest work, the
American Dictionary of the English Language. When Webster reached the last word,
he found himself “seized with a trembling” that made it nearly impossible to
hold his pen steady. He wasn’t sure why he was shaking—whether it was just
that he was so close to being done, or because the dictionary had sucked out all
of his remaining strength. Whatever the cause, Webster managed to push
through and finish the work. He then left his desk, walked around the room a
few times, and eventually the trembling stopped.
1

Webster had plenty of reasons to feel unsure about reaching the end of his
work on the dictionary. He had spent a significant amount of his own time and
money compiling a book that did not have a clear audience let alone a publisher.
Webster actually finished his manuscript in England, where he went in part to
find a London firm willing to take a chance on the project.
2
He was unsuccessful,
so he returned to the United States. His prospects in America seemed even
worse. A project on the scale of the American Dictionary, which aimed to be a
comprehensive record of American English, had never before been attempted in
the United States. American printers did not even have the correct type needed
to print such a project, and American publishers were wary about taking such a

1
Emily Ellsworth Fowler Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster (New York: privately
printed, 1912), 2:293.
2
David Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary (Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland, 2000), 192-193.

15
huge financial risk.
3
Indeed, before Webster, “American” reference books were
mostly reprints of British texts with little or no original contributions made by
the American compiler. The first dictionary written by an American was A School
Dictionary by Connecticut schoolteacher Samuel Johnson Jr. Published in 1798,
the book was basically a condensed version of William Perry’s Royal Standard
English Dictionary (1775), and most definitions were only a few words long.
4
For
example, Johnson Jr. defined the word “economy” as “good management.”
5
The
first general encyclopedia published in America was also completed in 1798. It
was essentially an American edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, with some
minor revisions and corrections made by Philadelphia bookseller and publisher
Thomas Dobson and a few other contributors. Perhaps the most significant
change was an expanded entry on America, written by geographer Jedidiah
Morse.
6
More American reference books started to appear in the early nineteenth
century. The majority of these books, such as the Spelling Dictionary (1807) by the
Boston novelist and schoolteacher Susanna Rowson, were primarily designed for
school children, so they were quite modest in aim and scope.
7
It was also during
this period that Webster published his first two dictionaries, A Compendious
Dictionary of the English Language (1806), and A Dictionary of the English Language;
Compiled for the Use of Common Schools of the United States (1807). These too lacked

3
Once the book did go to press, Webster’s publisher, Sherman Converse, had to get
much of the type from Germany. Eva Mae Burkett, American Dictionaries of the English Language
Before 1861 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1979), 145.
4
Burkett, 8-12.
5
Samuel Johnson Jr., A School Dictionary (New Haven: Edward O’Brien, 1798), 57.
6
Robert D. Arner, Dobson’s Encyclopaedia: The Publisher, Text, and Publication of America’s
First Britannica, 1789-1803 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 77-107.
7
On Susanna Rowson see Jonathon Green, Chasing the Sun: Dictionary-Makers and the
Dictionaries They Made (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996), 248-250. Rowson is also considered by
some scholars to be the first American woman editor. She began writing and working for the
Boston Weekly Magazine in 1802. Patricia Okker, Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of
Nineteenth-Century American Women Editors (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 7.

16
in originality. Most of the words and definitions, as Webster himself admitted,
were taken from John Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary of the English Language
(1764).
With his Dictionary of American English, Webster was attempting to do
something much more ambitious. However the problem was that even though
his name was well known in the United States by the 1820s (thanks largely to his
popular spelling book), the economics of the book trade during this period made
publishers wary of printing a large, expensive American reference book with a
limited readership.
8
It was not until the dictionary was finished that he was able
to convince one New Haven publisher, Sherman Converse, to take a chance.
Webster ultimately paved the way for later American compilers who hoped to
make a living gathering, organizing, and condensing information for the benefit
of others.
Beginning with Webster, this chapter examines how the production of
reference books in the United States evolved over the course of the nineteenth
century. I explore compilers’ motivations, sources, working methods, as well as
the problems they faced. I show how, during the first half of the nineteenth
century, compiling a reference book was essentially a small-scale production
undertaken by a few learned men. Compilers like Noah Webster and his rival,
New Hampshire-born lexicographer Joseph E. Worcester (whose relationship
with Webster will be detailed in the next chapter), labored for years on their
dictionaries, with only the help of their family and a few trusted assistants. These

8
The cost of producing books in the 1820s was still quite high, and the profit margins
were slim. See James N. Green, “Technology and the Cost of Books,” in A History of the Book in
America, vol. 2, An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840, ed.
Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 112-
119.

17
men were polymaths in the truest sense of the word, and their extensive and
varied knowledge helped them establish trust and credibility with readers.
Between 1840 and 1880, however, the work of making reference books, similar to
many other skilled enterprises in the American economy, changed. As the
American population grew and schooling expanded, publishers noticed a
growing market for reference books. Thus, firms such as D. Appleton & Co. of
New York began financing massive projects designed to produce the most
comprehensive reference books for a variety of different readers. Publishers
hired huge staffs and devised elaborate divisions of labor in order to complete
these works as quickly as possible. Instead of relying on one author to establish a
book’s credibility, publishers touted their large corps of specialists to assure the
reader that the information they were receiving was the most accurate and up to
date.

Harmless Drudges: Early Compilers
Early nineteenth-century compilers had many different reasons for
pursuing their work. Curiosity drove many compilers. Noah Webster famously
tried to count all the houses in each city and town he visited.
9
Joseph Worcester,
who was interested in longevity, attempted to count all the people in New
Hampshire (his home state) who had lived to be over 100 years old.
10
Compilers
did this type of work in their spare time, for their own amusement. John Bartlett
was a Cambridge bookseller who enjoyed compiling memorable quotations. It

9
Emily Ellsworth Fowler Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, vol. 1 (New York:
privately printed, 1912), 114-115.
10
Joseph E. Worcester, “Remarks on Longevity and the Expectation of Life in the United
States” (Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1826), 1-44.

18
was only after his friends saw his manuscript that they induced him to publish it.
Over one hundred and fifty years later, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (1855) is still
in print.
11
By and large, these men were fascinated with the world around them,
and they often wrote on a wide variety of subjects (from the English language, to
geography, to politics, to mathematics). Worcester was described by one
contemporary, for example, as “a slumbering volcano of facts and statistics” with
a “vast memory.”
12
This omnicompetence, as John Higham has explained, was
characteristic not just of compilers and other academics in the early nineteenth
century, but of Americans more generally.
13

Other compilers seem to have been driven by a desire for order.
Influenced by the classification systems of Dutch botanist Linnaeus and others,
certain Americans were passionate about organizing information.
14
Philadelphia
merchant Samuel Austin Allibone, the author of the Dictionary of English
Literature and British and American Authors, was well-known for his interest in
arranging information. One biographer later wrote of Allibone: “If he could have
had his methodical way, the streets would all be regularly numbered and
families would be compelled to live in the houses in alphabetical order. Cars
would be run always according to their numbers; and the generals of our armies
would have arranged to have the battle of the war fought alphabetically,
beginning with Antietam and ending with the Wilderness.”
15
Whatever the
reason that a person decided to become a compiler, it is clear that the work called

11
“Men You Ought to Know,” Boston Daily Globe, April 10, 1892.
12
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Old Cambridge (New York: Macmillan, 1899), 51-52.
13
Higham, 4-5.
14
Daniel R. Headrick, When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of
Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 16-18.
15
As quoted in S.D. McConnell, “S. Austin Allibone, A.M., LL.D.,” The Pennsylvania
Magazine of History and Biography 15, no. 2 (1891): 139-140.

19
for a special type of person. Compiling was not a glamorous job. The
lexicographer and son-in-law of Noah Webster, Chauncey A. Goodrich, echoed
the feelings of others when he explained in 1850: “The office of a lexicographer is
disgusting to most literary men. I would never have undertaken it, had I not
been personally interested.”
16

Early American compilers were not gentlemen of leisure, but rather, well-
educated men who needed to generate some kind of income to support their
compiling habit. Noah Webster and Joseph Worcester, for example, both
graduated from Yale University. Before becoming compilers, they worked as
teachers. In the 1859 preface to his Dictionary of the English Language, Joseph
Worcester explained that his book “was not undertaken with the expectation of
receiving any thing like an ample pecuniary compensation for the labor.”
17

Although compilers did not necessarily expect vast riches, they did look to their
writing (and their copyrights) as a way to make a living. But making money
through compiling was not easy. There were no wealthy patrons nor learned
societies in the United States, as there were in Europe, who were willing to
support these large undertakings. Noah Webster was one of the most famous
authors in the early nineteenth century United States, yet even he could not
procure enough subscribers to support his labors.
18
In addition, the literary
marketplace was unstable, and most publishers were not willing to take large
risks. During most of the twenty years it took Webster to write the American
Dictionary, he did not have the financial backing of a publisher. He relied on the

16
Chauncey A. Goodrich to George and Charles Merriam, December 21, 1850, G. & C.
Merriam Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
17
Joseph E. Worcester, A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Hickling, Swan, and
Brewer, 1860), vii.
18
On Webster’s efforts, see Burkett, 135-137.

20
income from his spelling books to support himself and his family (he had five
children), but even that was hardly enough to cover all of his expenses. He
ultimately moved from New Haven to the small academic town of Amherst just
to help lower his costs. Joseph Worcester was lucky in that he did not have
children to care for, and so could get by on a lower income. Nonetheless, even
Worcester had to edit an almanac, and abridge two other author’s dictionaries
before he had enough money to undertake his own.
19
In addition, once a
reference book was finally finished, compilers often found themselves
scrambling to find another job. The Boston lexicographer and librarian William
A. Wheeler got his start as an assistant to Joseph Worcester in the late 1850s.
Once Worcester’s dictionary was published, however, Wheeler looked for
employment “of a literary nature or as teacher” but was unsuccessful. He was
forced to ask Worcester for a loan of $400 to help him support his family.
20
At the
same time, even if the financial rewards of compiling these books were uncertain,
reference works helped establish their compilers as some of the leading scholars
in the United States. Many compilers were given honorary degrees, or invited to
join leading societies. Joseph E. Worcester, for example, received an honorary
degree of LL.D. from Brown University in 1847, and another from Dartmouth
College in 1856.
21

One compiler who anticipated the later changes in reference-book
production was Francis Lieber, who edited the Encyclopaedia Americana. Lieber
was a Prussian scholar who immigrated to the United States in 1827. Almost

19
Worcester edited Johnson’s English Dictionary as improved by Todd and abridged by
Chalmer’s, with Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary combined (1827) and Webster’s American Dictionary
of the English Language (1829). We know he was paid $2,000 for his work on Webster.
20
William A. Wheeler to Joseph E. Worcester, December 3, 1861, Joseph Worcester
Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
21
Samuel T. Worcester, 252.

21
immediately, he was determined to make his mark in his newly adopted home.
He devised a plan to edit an American edition of the German encyclopedia
Conversations-Lexicon. Although he based his proposed work on the German
encyclopedia, Lieber aimed to include many new articles unique to the United
States, and to omit existing articles that were outdated or irrelevant to American
readers. Lieber was able to convince the Philadelphia house of Carey, Lea, &
Carey, of Philadelphia, to publish the work, and to support him financially while
he worked on the project. This kind of agreement was extremely unusual during
this period. Carey, Lea & Carey agreed to pay Lieber $20,000 (in installments),
but that fee included all editorial costs. Lieber would receive no royalties on
books sold.
22
Lieber, more so than Webster or Worcester, saw his work on the
Americana as a temporary project. Compiling was less of a driving passion, and
more of a way to establish his credentials as a scholar in the United States. He
wrote to his parents in 1828 that, “I am contented with my occupation because it
has enabled me to marry, but if I were a man of means I should occupy myself
quite differently.”
23
Perhaps this is why, after the Americana was published,
Lieber never compiled another reference work. Instead, he worked as a
professor, author, and public intellectual.
Once a compiler decided to edit a reference book, with or without the
support of a publisher, the first thing he or she had to do was locate sources. For
early compilers, theses sources were usually other reference books (general and
specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias), and well-known works of literature.

22
Drake De Kay, “Encyclopedia Americana, First Edition,” The Journal of Library History 3,
no. 3 (July 1968): 205.
23
Francis Lieber, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, ed. Thomas Sergeant Perry (Boston:
James R. Osgood & Co., 1882), 83.

22
When Noah Webster moved his family from New Haven to Amherst in 1821 to
save money, he struggled to find some of the specific materials he needed in such
a small town. Sources were a problem for Webster because much of his efforts
were focused on etymology (he claimed to have learned twenty languages so
that he could undertake this work), and in order to understand the origin and
history of English words he needed access to rare foreign-language texts.
24
He
wrote to his friend, statesman John Jay in 1821, “I cannot revise and complete the
work without helps of men and books, which I cannot have in the country, and
my income will not maintain my family in one of our large towns.”
25
But even
the larger American cities did not contain all of the material Webster needed, so
he was forced to set sail for Europe in 1824. He spent time in Paris and
Cambridge, where he visited the best libraries and looked through old and rare
foreign-language reference books. Webster was not alone in his lack of access to
pertinent books and manuscripts. Joseph Worcester, who lived in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, also faced a similar problem, despite having more resources
nearby. Worcester kept a relatively large library for the time, which in 1855 he
estimated contained more than two thousand volumes. Two hundred and thirty
of these were dictionaries. The rest focused on lexicography, philology,
geography and statistics, history, and theology.
26
Worcester was also known to
spend time in the Harvard Library.
27
But like Webster, Worcester found himself
unable to gather all the information on the origins of words that he needed in
America. In 1837, he wrote to New Haven bookseller Edward C. Herrick looking

24
Newspapers often noted Webster’s knowledge of twenty languages, although recent
biographer David Micklethwait has argued that such mastery was unlikely. See, for example,
Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics, July 23, 1831, 3; Micklethwait, 162-163.
25
Ford, 2:162.
26
Luther Farnham, A Glance at Private Libraries (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1855), 40.

27
Mrs. Julia Lindsley to Mrs. Worcester, June 5, 1856, Worcester Papers, MHS.

23
for some of Webster’s early writings, but Herrick was unable to locate anything
for Worcester.
28
In the end, Worcester too was forced to travel to Europe in order
to find enough sources to compile his dictionary.
29

Despite the growing ubiquity of print, letters remained vital sources of
information for compilers of reference books during the nineteenth century.
Joseph Worcester’s experience compiling the American Almanac from 1831-1842
reveals just how important letters were for gathering statistical and geographic
information. Unlike almanacs from the eighteenth century, which were mostly
filled with stories, receipts, verse, and other literary miscellany, the American
Almanac under Worcester contained important and accurate facts about people
and places in the United States.
30
As compiler, Worcester engaged a wide
network of correspondents in order to get the most up-to-date information about
politics, education, and business in each of the states. In 1831 he asked judge and
publisher James Hall, of Vandalia, Illinois, to be his agent in that state (at that
time Vandalia was the state capital). Hall agreed, and sent Worcester information
on the Illinois constitution, government, judiciary, penitentiary, internal
improvements, farming, climate, minerals, and colleges.
31
The President of St.
Louis University, Reverend P.J. Verheagan, sent Worcester information on
literary institutions in Missouri.
32
Another academic, the President of the
University of Nashville Phillip Lindsley, also promised to aid Worcester in
gathering information on his home state of Tennessee. Worcester was looking for

28
Edward C. Herrick to Worcester, October 9, 1837, Worcester Papers, MHS.
29
Samuel T. Worcester, “Joseph E. Worcester, LL.D.,” Granite Monthly: A Magazine of
Literature, History, and State Progress 3 (April 1880): 249.
30
Marion Barber Stowell, Early American Almanacs: The Colonial Weekday Bible (New York:
Burt Franklin, 1977).
31
James Hall to Worcester, June 7, 1831, Worcester Papers, MHS.
32
P.J. Verhaegen to Worcester, December 23, 1832, Worcester Papers, MHS.

24
the current names and offices of elected officials, information on banks, and
information on internal improvements, among other topics.
33
Lindsley, however,
had trouble finding much of the information Worcester needed.
34
Worcester’s
experience with Lindsley was not unusual, and so he was always on the look out
for new correspondents.
To aid in his labors, Worcester asked the famed statesman and orator
Edward Everett to help him find correspondents.
35
In 1835, he printed a circular
asking friends and associates to forward any valuable information that could be
used in the Almanac. The back of the circular included a form for his
correspondents to fill out in which Worcester asked for information relating to
the government, educational institutions, internal improvements, and even
obituary notices of noted individuals.
36
Still, even with all of his best efforts,
Worcester was, rather than being awash in information, constantly frustrated by
not having an equal amount of information on each of the states. He said as
much in his preface to the American Almanac in 1838: “In conducting the work,
we have frequently found it impossible to procure the information wanted. The
statistics of the whole country can never be collected by one individual, nor by a
society formed for the purpose.” Because of his own difficulties, Worcester urged
the United States government to design a more comprehensive census that

33
Phillip Lindsley to Worcester, March 11, 1831, Worcester Papers, MHS.
34
Phillip Lindsley to Worcester, August 6, 1831, Worcester Papers, MHS.
35
Edward Everett to Worcester, Washington, March 9, 1834, Worcester Papers, MHS.
36
Joseph E. Worcester, “Dear Sir : with many thanks to friends ... who have been so good
as to furnish information for the American Almanac” (Cambridge, MA: 1835), Broadsides
Collection, MHS.

25
would provide more accurate and complete picture of how the United States was
growing and changing.
37

Once compilers gathered their sources, they next had to decide how they
were going to manage all of their information. Luckily, they had the experience
of others to draw from. Many of the technologies associated with compiling
reference books were centuries old. And indeed, early nineteenth-century
American compilers followed many of same methods that scholars of previous
centuries had. Cutting and pasting from manuscripts and printed books and
using slips of paper were just a few of the practices that continued into the
nineteenth century.
38
While Noah Webster did not have one of the famous
Renaissance bookwheels (rotating devices used to quickly refer to multiple
books), he did use a large circular desk in order to compare definitions and
research etymologies. His method was to spread several books around the desk
(including Johnson’s Dictionary from 1799 and the Dobson edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica), and stand in the very middle.
39
After looking through
one of these reference books for a certain word, he would make a note, and then
move on to the next book. Unlike the famous British lexicographer Samuel
Johnson, who used slips, Webster relied on paper booklets to write down his
words and definitions.
40
He would start on the inside of the right page so that he

37
Joseph E. Worcester, The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge (Boston:
Charles Bowen, 1837), iv. On Worcester’s interest in the census, see Patricia Cline Cohen, A
Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (New York: Routledge, 1999), 175-204.
38
Blair, 210-213.
39
Ford, 2:116. On the controversy over whether or not Webster used a chair in the course
of his work, see David Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary (Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland, 2000), 161-162.
40
On Johnson’s methods, see Allen Reddick, The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746-1773
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

26
could use the left-handed pages to add in corrections.
41
If he later changed his
mind about the origin of a word, he would paste a piece of paper over his
original scribblings. Webster frequently made corrections, as he was constantly
consulting new reference books.
42
Joseph Worcester seems to have employed
similar methods. When Worcester’s Dictionary of the English Language was
published in 1860, he had it bound into seven volumes. The volumes had blank
pages inserted between each printed page so that Worcester could add (in his
own hand) new words, corrections, and other revisions.
43

Most compilers were extremely systematic in their work. Samuel Austin
Allibone, who began compiling his Dictionary of English Literature and British and
American Authors in 1857, used boxes to sort out the many memoranda he saved
relating to various authors. Each box represented a letter in the alphabet, and
each piece of information relating to a specific author was bundled together
alphabetically in the box. In addition, before adding an author to his manuscript
(which he did using pencil), Allibone would first examine around a hundred
biographical and bibliographical dictionaries and catalogues.
44

While working on the Encyclopaedia Americana, Francis Lieber rented an
office and hired people to translate the twelve volumes of the Conversations-
Lexicon for 50 cents per page.
45
In 1828, he had twelve translators working around
the clock.
46
He also hired an assistant, Edward Wigglesworth, who helped him

41
Webster’s booklets are at the New York Public Library and Morgan Library in New
York.
42
Micklethwait, 176-179.
43
Samuel T. Worcester, “Joseph E. Worcester, LL.D.,” Granite Monthly: A Magazine of
Literature, History, and State Progress 3 (April 1880): 251.
44
“Labor of Bookmaking,” New York Observer and Chronicle, June 11, 1863, 189.
45
De Kay, 206.
46
Francis Lieber, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, ed. Thomas Sergeant Perry (Boston:
James R. Osgood & Co., 1882), 82.

27
edit articles and wrote some articles as well. As the project neared completion, he
hired a second assistant, Thomas Gamaliel Bradford. He also relied on several
outside contributors, who were paid a dollar a page for their work. Justice Joseph
Story, John Pickering, Robert Welsh, Dr. R.E. Griffith, and Charles Pickering
were among the many notable contributors.
47
It took Lieber five years to finish
the encyclopedia, and his letters to his parents during that time reveal the ups
and downs of the life of a compiler. On February 21, 1830 he complained about
the difficulties of being a polymath: “I have to think of a thousand different
things and be always ready to direct my assistants…You can form an idea how
the powers of the mind must thus be scattered in many directions. Then comes
the selection of the articles, the trouble with the printers, the hurrying on of the
work which has been placed in other hands…”
48
But despite the struggles, Lieber
pressed on, and the entire thirteen-volume work was completed by 1833. Each
volume sold for $2.50. The encyclopedia was well received by the scholarly
community in the United States, and it continued to be reprinted for several
decades, as other publishers rented the plates from Carey, Lea, & Carey.
49

Indeed, during the first thirty years after it publication the encyclopedia was
purchased by at least half of the institutions of higher learning in the United
States including the University of Alabama, Bowdoin College, Harvard College
(which owned three sets), and Kenyon College.
50

Lieber could not have completed his project without the help of others. He
was not alone in this regard. Although they did much of the work themselves,

47
De Kay, 206-207.
48
Perry, 88.
49
Frank Freidel, Francis Lieber: Nineteenth Century Liberal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1947), 72.
50
De Kay, 214-219.

28
early nineteenth-century American compilers were often aided in their efforts by
friends, family, and paid assistants. The efforts of these individuals often went
unacknowledged when the books were finally published. Indeed, it is a long-
standing legend that Noah Webster compiled his 1828 dictionary all by himself.
In reality, Webster’s son, William G. Webster, transcribed Webster’s messy
manuscript booklets into something readable for the printer. In addition,
Webster’s publisher, Sherman Converse, hired a Harvard graduate, James Gates
Percival, to do the proof-reading, making sure that the printed proofs matched
the manuscript. Percival also gave general suggestions on the work.
51
Others,
particularly Webster’s son-in-law William C. Fowler, also offered comments and
criticisms during the later stages.
52
Because Webster was already quite old when
the American Dictionary was published, later editions came to rely even more
heavily on the work of others. Joseph Worcester prepared the abridged version
of the American Dictionary, which was published in 1830. The second edition of
the American Dictionary, which was published in 1841, was the last edition
Webster oversaw before he died. However because Webster was particularly
ungenerous when it came to acknowledging all the help he received, we only
know for sure that Yale Professor William Tully assisted with medical words and
definitions. There were undoubtedly more people involved.
Joseph Worcester, like Webster, was known for undertaking much of the
work on his dictionaries himself. But Worcester too had help from a variety of
different sources. Such assistance was necessary, in large part, because Worcester
struggled with vision problems for much of his life. Indeed, from 1847 to 1849 he

51
Micklethwait, 195-198.
52
Burkett, 149.

29
was practically blind, until he had a series of operations that restored the sight in
his left eye.
53
By the late 1850s, Worcester was working with six assistants:
William A. Wheeler, Richard Soule, Jr., Loomis J. Campbell, William P. Drew,
Joseph Hale Abbot, and John S. Dwight.
54
In their contract with Worcester’s
publisher, William Draper Swan, Wheeler and Soule asked for “a room properly
arranged, warmed and lighted, and furnished with a complete apparatus of the
books directly used in the work of the Dictionary.” Most of their work involved
revising Worcester’s proofs to help speed them through the press.
55
However we
also know that the men contributed some original work to the project. Wheeler
later claimed to have written the “Pronouncing Vocabulary of Modern
Biographical Names” which was added to the end of the dictionary.
56
He later
complained to Worcester that he was never properly acknowledged for all of his
contributions. In 1863, Wheeler accepted a position compiling a similar list to
what would be the 1864 edition of Webster’s Dictionary.
57
He published his own
book on this topic, An Explanatory and Pronouncing Dictionary of the Noted Names
of Fiction in 1865. Wheeler continued working for George and Charles Merriam
on different versions of Webster’s dictionaries through the 1870s.
Perhaps Worcester’s most important, yet least known assistant was his
wife, Amy Elizabeth McKean. Indeed, while the title pages of nineteenth-
reference books give the impression that most of this labor was done by men,

53
Samuel T. Worcester, 249-250.
54
Joseph E. Worcester, A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Hickling, Swan, and
Brewer, 1860), vi.
55
Charles Folsom to William Draper Swan, October 9, 1857, Charles Folsom Papers,
Boston Public Library.
56
William A. Wheeler to Worcester, June 30, 1863, Worcester Papers, MHS.
57
William A. Wheeler to Worcester, July 10, 1863, Worcester Papers, MHS.

30
other surviving evidence points to a more complicated story.
58
Wives were often
involved with their husband’s work, although their efforts were rarely
recognized. This arrangement was in large part because, during the antebellum
period, American embraced an ideology of separate spheres for women and
men. Beginning in the 1820s, there was a growing corps of women editors, but
they mostly edited periodicals for women and children. Those women who did
try to speak to a wider audience were generally not taken seriously.
59
Thus,
acknowledging wives in the reference books they helped to create would have
undermined the authority of the work.
Elizabeth, as she was known to friends and family, was the daughter of
Reverend Joseph McKean, a professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard who
passed away when she was only sixteen.
60
McKean was a schoolteacher who
taught out of Fay House in Cambridge, which her father had owned.
61
McKean
and Worcester were married in 1841, when she was 39, and he was 57. McKean
immediately began assisting Worcester in his lexicographical work. As Rhode
Island school superintendent Reverend Thomas H. Vail wrote to Worcester in
1846:
I think that Mrs. W., though her name may not be as extensively known in
connection with your work as her husband’s, must yet take great pleasure
in its successful accomplishment, & her personal friends & acquaintances

58
We know of a few nineteenth-century female compilers of dictionaries, including
Susanna Rowson, Eliza Robbins, Anna Randall-Diehl (among others). But much more work
remains to be done on this important topic.
59
Okker, 8, 16.
60
Amy Elizabeth McKean was born on July 23, 1802. Her father died suddenly in Cuba in
1818, when he was only 42 years old. See William H. Manning, The Genealogical and Biographical
History of the Manning Families of New England (Salem, MA: Salem Press, 1902), 720.
61
Fay House was one of the founding buildings of Radcliffe College. In a strange
coincidence, Fay House was also the place where George Ripley, co-editor of the American
Cyclopedia, was married in 1827. See Christina Hopkinson Baker, The Story of Fay House
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929), 25-26, 43; Mary Carolina Crawford, The Romance of
Old New England Rooftrees (Boston: L.C. Page, 1902), 281-282.

31
can not fail to appreciate the aid which even the persevering & learned
author must have derived from such a coadjutor.
62

Indeed, Elizabeth’s letters to her family attest to how much time she and
Worcester spent working on his dictionaries. In May of 1855, she told her sister-
in-law Olive Gay Worcester (who was married to Worcester’s brother Henry)
that she was reading the proofs for the Comprehensive Dictionary and that they
were “both very busy.”
63
By December, she explained to Olive how it had
consumed their lives: “We were both so engrossed & constantly occupied with
the Dictionary while it was in press…that I could not ask any friend to come &
stay with us, as I could be so little with them I could neither enjoy their visits nor
do much to render them pleasant to them.”
64

In addition to Worcester, Samuel Austin Allibone, author of the Dictionary
of English Literature and British and American Authors, also relied on his wife for
assistance. Mary Henry Allibone prepared all 20,000 pages of his manuscript for
the press.
65
Mary was the daughter of the Philadelphia merchant Alexander
Henry, and she was known for her “wonderfully brilliant and active mind.” She
died in 1906, when she was seventy-nine years old.
66
Finally, John Bartlett, the
author of Familiar Quotations, was aided by his wife, Anna Willard.
67
Willard was
highly educated, and like McKean, came from an academic family. Her father
was a professor at Harvard and her grandfather was the President of Harvard. In

62
Thomas H. Vail to Worcester, Westerly, R.I., September 23, 1846, Worcester Papers,
MHS.
63
Amy Elizabeth Worcester to Olive Gay Worcester, May 20, 1855, Worcester Family
Papers, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.
64
Amy Elizabeth Worcester to Olive Gay Worcester, December 10, 1855, Worcester
Family Papers, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.
65
S.D. McConnell, “S. Austin Allibone, A.M., LL.D.,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography 15, no. 2 (1891): 136.
66
Publishers’ Circular, May 19, 1906, 623.
67
Bartlett acknowledges his wife’s help in a letter to Professor Henry Haynes. See John
Bartlett to Henry Haynes, January 15, 1889 [1890], Henry Haynes Papers, MHS.

32
addition to Familiar Quotations, Willard helped Bartlett compile A New and
Complete Concordance or Verbal Index to Words, Phrases, and Passages, in the
Dramatic Works of Shakespeare (1894). Willard and Bartlett spent over twenty years
on this work, but Willard died before it was finished.
68
Bartlett was one of the
few compilers to acknowledge his wife’s contributions by dedicating the work to
her, noting that her “ever-ready assistance in the preparation of this book has
made my labour a pastime.”
69
Still, he did not go so far as to make her a co-
author.
The spread of print during the first half of the nineteenth century brought
with it considerable anxieties about the extent to which printed information was
reliable. From newspapers hoaxes to counterfeit bank notes, Americans had
plenty of reasons to be suspicious about what they were reading.
70
At the same
time, the very instability of information during this period created a desperate
felt need for authority. Reference books became trusted sources of information
precisely because they were so personal. Readers knew about the authors of
these works and knew what they stood for. Antebellum dictionaries, and to some
extent encyclopedias, were the product of one man’s intense study and labor. All
the virtues of the work, as well as the failings, in the eyes of the reader, were the
responsibility of one man, and one man alone. The personal nature of these
works is perhaps best exemplified in their titles. Although Webster and
Worcester had various titles for their dictionaries, the public generally referred to
them as “Webster’s” or “Worcester’s.” The personal nature of these books also

68
M.H. Morgan, “John Bartlett,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
41, no. 35 (July 1906): 844-845.
69
John Bartlett, A New and Complete Concordance or Verbal Index to Words, Phrases, and
Passages, in the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare (New York: MacMillan, 1894), n.p.
70
On paper money, print, and trust, see David M. Henkin, City Reading: Written Words
and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 137-165.

33
meant that any questioning of a compiler’s working methods and use of sources
could be devastating for sales. The idea of the all-knowing, trustworthy compiler
began the moment the reader picked up the text and leafed through the first
pages. Staring right back at the readers of Webster’s American Dictionary was an
engraving of Webster himself.
71
The engraving, done by Asher B. Durand, was
from a portrait painted by Finley Morse, an old family friend.
72
In it Webster sits
in a tall backed chair. His expression is solemn and serious. One eyebrow is
slightly raised, as if he had just been interrupted. His left hand holds some kind
of manuscript—a letter? Notes on the dictionary? The impression on the viewer
is immediate: here is a serious scholar. This is someone whose work can be
trusted. A similar engraving was eventually placed in Worcester’s Dictionary of
the English Language in the mid-1860s.
73
The portrait, engraved by George
Edward Perine, shows Worcester in his library, surrounded by books.
74
He is
wearing glasses, and like Webster, he also has a manuscript in his hands, which
he is studying intently. Publishers ultimately used these images to create a
powerful narrative about the authority of their respective dictionary. By the late
nineteenth century, however, Americans were less apt to believe that one person
could know it all. Information was increasing at too rapid a pace. As a result,
publishers shifted strategies, marketing their reference books not as the work of
one polymath, but as the work of many specialists.

71
The engraving was first used for Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary (Springfield:
Sherman Converse), and continued to be used throughout the nineteenth century.
72
On Durand, see Catalogue of the Engraved Work of Asher B. Durand (New York: Grolier
Club, 1895).
73
The exact date the frontispiece was first used is unclear. The earliest use of Worcester’s
portrait that could be found for this dissertation was an 1866 edition of the Dictionary of the
English Language, published by Brewer & Tileston. It continued to be used by J.B. Lippincott in
subsequent editions.
74
On Perine, see Daniel McNeely Stauffer, American Engravers Upon Copper and Steel (New
York: Grolier Club, 1907), 1:08-209.

34

A Better Mode of Dictionary-Making
Between 1840 and 1880, the ways in which reference books were
constructed changed as the financial rewards grew more reliable and appealing.
Publishers saw a growing demand for these types of books, and they were
willing to spend hundred of thousands of dollars in order to make their book the
best, or the most nearly comprehensive. Indeed, while compilers took the lead on
earlier projects, by the late nineteenth century, publishers were calling the shots
and directing these huge undertakings. In many ways, compilers benefited from
this arrangement. Publishers paid for all the necessary materials to undertake
such a work. They also paid more money to compilers. The editors of the
American Cyclopaedia, George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, for example, grew rich
from their work on the encyclopedia during the 1860s and 1870s. D. Appleton &
Co. paid them twelve and a half cents on every volume that was sold, and one
dollar for every complete set sold.
75
Their contract turned out to be a good one, as
the encyclopedia was a huge success. By 1880, the two had made about
$180,000.
76

Although reference books produced during the late nineteenth century
were often compiled by scholars, they were first and foremost commercial
products. This commercial orientation was in contrast not just to early American
reference books, but all to many of the reference book projects in Europe, most
notably, the Oxford English Dictionary (then known as the New English Dictionary),
which was supported by the London Philological Society and Oxford

75
Octavius Brooks Frothingham, George Ripley (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882), 223.
76
Charles Crowe, George Ripley: Transcendentalist and Utopian Socialist (Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 1967), 236.

35
University.
77
Indeed, in 1894, the New York Times specifically contrasted that
British dictionary (then being edited by Dr. James Murray) with the most recent
American dictionary, the Standard: “Dr. Murray’s is purely a work of scholarship,
while the Standard is a business enterprise, enlisting scholarship and erudition, of
course, but organizing and carrying on its work for business purposes and
according to business methods…”
78
When this multi-volume American
dictionary was finally completed in 1895, the Times emphasized this distinction
again in a second review, noting that the Standard was “a triumph of modern
business methods.”
79
The editor-in-chief of the Standard was Isaac K. Funk. Born
in 1839, Funk was a Lutheran minister from Ohio who got his start in publishing
in the 1870s as the editor of the Christian Radical and later the Union Advocate
(New York). In 1876 he began publishing his own magazine for preachers, the
Metropolitan Pulpit. He co-founded the publishing firm Funk & Wagnalls with
Kansas lawyer Adam Willis Wagnalls in 1877. The firm originally specialized in
religious texts, but by the 1890s its list had expanded to educational books,
including the Standard Dictionary. Funk was also know as a strong supporter of
the Temperance Party. He helped establish the newspaper the Voice in 1884,
which served to further the temperance cause.
80
More than any other late-
nineteenth century compiler, Funk represented how the job had changed over
time. Funk was certainly passionate about his lexicographical work. He was a
vocal advocate for reformed spelling and was even working on revisions to his

77
The compiling of the New English Dictionary began in 1858. Its most famous editor, Dr.
James Murray, was not appointed until 1878, and the project was not actually completed until
1928.
78
New York Times, March 19, 1894.
79
New York Times, May 19, 1895.
80
William E. Johnson, “Sept. 30, 1839—Isaac Kaufman Funk—April 4, 1912,” American
Advance, April 13, 1912, 2.

36
dictionary the day he died. Yet he was also known as a shrewd businessman
who knew how to move books.
81
Publishers’ Weekly compared Funk to Julius
Caesar, noting that everyone who worked for his firm felt his “influence and
inspiration.”
82

Funk was successful in large part because he knew that in order to sell
more books, he had to adapt his work to suit a mass market. One way Funk and
other compilers achieved this goal was by expanding their use of sources to
include popular texts. Late nineteenth-century compilers gathered information
from other reference works, as well as biographies, histories, travel books,
statistical reports, journals, magazines, and even newspapers. As one article on
the making of the Century Dictionary explained, “No printed page, not even the
advertisements in a daily newspaper, which contains a scrap of information
about an English word, is to be disregarded.”
83
Indeed, the use of newspapers as
a source represents a major difference between earlier nineteenth-century general
reference books.
84
It is difficult to date exactly when this practice of using
newspapers started. In 1860 compiler Roswell Park sent Joseph Worcester a
collection of words he thought Worcester might be interested in adding to his
dictionary. But he explained to Worcester that some of the words he had
gathered—such as borotrope (Park defined this as a kind of velocipede) and
diptheria—“have only newspaper authority.”
85
As late as the 1890s, compilers

81
John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 2, The Expansion of an
Industry, 1865-1919 (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1975), 373-374.
82
“Dr. I.K. Funk,” Publishers’ Weekly, April 13, 1912, 1269.
83
“Why and How the Great Dictionary Was Made,” Century Illustrated Magazine, January
1892, 13.
84
The use of newspapers, as Kenneth Cmeil has argued, also illustrated lexicographers
growing acceptance of slang. See Kenneth Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence: The Fight Over Popular
Speech in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: William Morrow, 1990), 228.
85
Roswell Park to Joseph E. Worcester, March 26, 1860, Worcester Papers, MHS.

37
felt compelled to explain their choice of source to their readers. The editors of the
Standard Dictionary told readers in 1895 that, “Quotations from newspapers have,
not infrequently, been given—first, because the newspaper is near the people
and indicates the common or currant usage; and secondly, because some of the
best writing in English today is to be found in the better literature of this class.”
86

Although the editors did not explicitly mention it, there was probably another
reason why the Standard and other reference books came to rely on newspapers
as sources: they were the most up to date. And, as the next chapter will show, by
mid-century, providing up-to-date information became an important selling
point for reference book publishers.
Compilers relied on their own libraries for materials (which publishers
now paid for), as well as the vast collections of many of the top libraries in the
United States. The Astor Library, the Mercantile Library, the Columbia
University Library, and the Lenox Library in New York, as well as the Academy
of Arts and Sciences in Boston and the Harvard Library in Cambridge were
frequently singled out by compilers, who thanked librarians for their assistance.
In New York, a number of reference book publishers, including A.J. Johnson &
Co., Dodd, Mead & Co., D. Appleton & Co., and Funk and Wagnalls were
conveniently clustered around the Astor and Mercantile libraries. Compilers
were known to “continually haunt” these institutions in order to find what they
needed.
87
Of course, using more sources meant that reference-book compiling
became a lot more time consuming. The editors of the Standard Dictionary
claimed that their staff had consulted nearly 100,000 volumes in order to find

86
Funk, Isaac K., ed., Standard Dictionary, vol. 1 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1895),
xiii. Partially quoted in Cmeil, 228.
87
“About a Literary Centre,” New York Times, December 11, 1892.

38
quotations for their words.
88
They explained, “It has been a herculean task to
select, locate, and verify exactly the quotations used in the Standard. Practically
all English literature has been ransacked for this purpose…”
89

In addition to printed materials, later compilers of reference books
continued to use letters to gather necessary information. A.J. Johnson, publisher
of Johnson’s Cyclopedia (1874-1877), wrote to “hundreds of local correspondents”
during the late 1860s to gather statistical information, as well as facts on the local
history of American cities and towns. Indeed, Johnson’s editors noted that “the
necessary manuscript correspondence has been too voluminous to be maintained
in any other way than by dictation to phonographic clerks or other rapid
writers.”
90
Dictionary compilers also relied on correspondence. While the New
English Dictionary is famous today for its dependence on far-flung readers to
compile illustrative quotations for its definitions, American dictionaries took a
similar (albeit more limited) approach. The editors of the Century Dictionary
wrote letters to people asking for new words and different meanings. They relied
on a diverse group of readers that included “missionaries in foreign lands,” as
well as “soldiers, herders, and hunters in the far West” to help them identify and
define words.
91
Likewise, the Standard Dictionary claimed to have engaged 500
people to find quotations for their work.
As with earlier compilers, after locating sources, later nineteenth-century
compilers had to figure out their own processes for sorting through all the
information they had gathered. The method of compiling the New English

88
Funk, x.
89
Funk, xii.
90
Frederick A.P. Barnard and Arnold Guyot, eds., Johnson’s New Universal Cyclopaedia,
vol. 1 (New York: A.J. Johnson, 1874), xiii.
91
Charles Barnard, “The Making of a Great Dictionary,” Christian Union, March 7, 1889,
297.

39
Dictionary (now known as the Oxford English Dictionary) is a well-known tale of
nineteenth-century information management. The project relied on the
contributions of thousands of different readers, who sent in a multitude of slips
containing illustrative quotations. When Dr. James Murray became editor of the
project, one of his first tasks was to bring order to the bags and bags of slips that
were quickly deteriorating with age. His solution was to built a fireproof
scriptorium, where he and his assistants did most of their work. Within the
scriptorium, he managed to organize the slips using a thousand pigeonholes that
he had specially installed.
92
While Murray’s methods are more well known, late
nineteenth-century American compilers also grappled with how to manage all of
their information.
When the New American Cyclopaedia was first published (from 1858-1863),
it was a relatively modest undertaking. Its compilers were two men with
newspaper backgrounds: George Ripley, editor of Putnam’s Magazine, and
Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Tribune. Today Ripley is best known for
founding the utopian community of Brook Farm in the 1840s. Dana also spent
time at Brook Farm. The enterprise eventually folded, thanks in large part to a
bad business plan and poor management by Ripley and others. It is an odd
coincidence then, that Ripley came to be in charge of a huge publication with
major organizational challenges.
93

92
K.M. Elisabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English
Dictionary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 173-174.
93
On George Ripley see Charles Crowe, George Ripley: Transcendentalist and Utopian
Socialist (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967). On Charles A. Dana see Janet Ellen Steele,
“From Paradise to Park Row: The Life, Opinions and Newspapers of Charles A. Dana, 1819-1897”
(Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1986). Both of these biographies spend little time
discussing Ripley and Dana’s involvement with the American Cyclopedia.

40
While editing the first edition, Ripley and Dana had some assistance, but
they did the bulk of the work themselves, including choosing themes, preparing
the copy and revising all the proofs.
94
This structure changed in the late 1860s,
when they began work on the revision. D. Appleton & Co. paid for an
enlargement of the staff and the encyclopedia in general. They allowed the entire
fourth story of the Appleton building in New York to serve as the workshop for
their famous Cyclopaedia. Visitors to the workshop saw a crowded space where
twenty-five to thirty men busily worked. The first thing they probably noticed
was that the room was bursting with books. Indeed, one entire side of the room
was given up to bookshelves. But the centerpiece of the space was a large desk
that cut through the room. Here was where the writers sat. Above the desk, D.
Appleton & Co. installed their own system of pigeonholes, which, before the
development of vertical files in the 1890s, were used by businesses to keep track
of all their information.
95
These pigeonholes proved especially useful for
organizing material for the Cyclopaedia.
In many ways, the production of the American Cyclopaedia came to
resemble the work of any other American factory, with elaborate division of
labor and a clear hierarchy. Ripley now spent his days in the workshop, closely
monitoring the work of his writers. As one contemporary biographer explained,
Ripley was always “anxious lest any piece of valuable information should be
omitted, or any defective workmanship be admitted…”
96
Dana, the other editor
of the work, was less involved in the day-to-day operations, spending only an

94
James Harrison Wilson, The Life of Charles A. Dana (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1907), 174.
95
JoAnne Yates, Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American
Management (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 28-31.
96
Octavius Brooks Frothingham, George Ripley (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882), 220.

41
hour or so each day in the office, before he went off to his other job. In addition
to Ripley and Dana, there were four associate editors (Robert Carter, Michael
Heilprin, Alfred H. Guernsey, and Francis A. Teall) who worked on the
cyclopedia. Their job involved revising and correcting the work of others. Below
the associate editors were the general revisers. These men were mostly
specialists, and each worked on revising articles related to their field of expertise.
For example, the physician and professor Dr. Edward H. Clarke of Boston
worked on many of the medical articles.
97
While the general revisers played an
important role, the cyclopedia also relied on a large group of outside
contributors, many of whom were scattered across the United States. Ohio-born
Rossiter W. Raymond, for example, contributed articles on mines and mining.
Finally, one of the most important employees of the Cyclopaedia was the
secretary, John Milner. His job was to keep a record of all the work that was
going on. His books listed the writers, what they were working on, the date at
which they were assigned the task, and the date at which they completed the
task. He also kept track of all proofs that came in from the printer in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The revision of the encyclopedia started with Ripley and Dana. They took
the old edition and marked it up using a pencil. Their markups indicated which
articles needed to be shortened, revised, or deleted entirely. Articles that needed
to be changed were then cut out and pasted in the middle of half-sheets of
foolscap paper. These papers were then given to the writers. Once the writers
had completed their revision, their text went to the associate editors. These
editors engaged in fact-checking and general editing. When the article was

97
Frothingham, 221-222.

42
considered done, it was sent off to the printer. Galley-proofs were sent back to
the workshop, where the process of editing would begin again. The proof, with
corrections, was then sent back to the printer, who made the changes in type.
Once enough articles were completed the printer would send page proofs back to
the workshop, where they would continue to be revised. According to one
article, the Cyclopaedia continued to be revised in light of current events. These
constant revisions meant that many plates were ultimately destroyed in order to
incorporate the new matter.
98

The compilers of the Century Dictionary pioneered the most innovative
approach when it came to managing reference information during the nineteenth
century. By 1887, over five years into their work on the dictionary, they had
amassed over 25,000 sheets. These sheets included excerpts from the Imperial
Dictionary (the text on which the Century was originally based on), as well as
manuscript corrections, additions, and other edits made by the editors
themselves. Roswell Smith, the president of the Century Dictionary, realized how
valuable all those sheets were. They were the result of years of research, and
many expert opinions. But because the dictionary was still in process, the editors
needed to have the proofs in the office with them as they worked, so the pages
could be consulted and cross-referenced as needed. Smith and others connected
with the project worried about what a sudden fire could do to all this work. At
first, they planned on insuring the papers for $150,000. However they soon
realized that the money would offer small consolation in terms of all the
knowledge lost, so they took a different approach.

98
“How a Cyclopaedia is Made,” Appletons’ Journal of Literature, Science, and Art, January
3, 1874, 18.

43
William Lewis Fraser, who was in charge of the illustrations for the
Century, came up with the idea to reduce the size of these sheets through
photography. In some way Fraser’s idea was not totally out of the blue. The
Century Company was already using photography to help enhance their wood
engravings for other publications.
99
The original pages were 10 x 12 inches, but
through photography, they were able to produce a glass negative of the page that
was only 1 ¾ by 2 inches. Using a magnifying glass, editors could easily read
every word on the negative. They could also use the negative to reproduce the
sheets, in any size they wanted. The result was that they had turned their huge
mass of documents in to a size that could easily be stored and handled. Roswell
Smith claimed that the whole thing only cost around $300. It was the first time a
book manuscript had ever been duplicated in this manner.
100
And although the
term “microfilm” had not yet come into existence, the compilers of the Century
Dictionary were clearly one of the first to use this idea.
As it turns out, the Century Company was right to be concerned about the
loss of their manuscript. In July of 1888, a fire broke out in G.W. Alexander’s
book-binding shop, which was located just a floor above the Century offices.
When a pot of glue dropped from the bindery down through the burning floor, it
ignited flames that caused serious damage to the firm offices. The dictionary
rooms were scorched and flooded (from the water used by the firemen to put out
the fire). Luckily, the most valuable manuscripts and images were kept in the
fireproof De Vinne Press building in Brooklyn. And the reduced photographic

99
Michael Hancher, “Illustrations,” Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North
America 17 (1996): 79-115.
100
“Photographing ‘Copy,’” Photographic Times and American Photographer, January 21,
1887, 35; “A New Use of Photography,” Friend, February 5, 1887, 214; “What Can Be Seen in the
Century Office in New York,” Philadelphia Photographer, August 6, 1887, 466.

44
copies of the Century Dictionary were stored in the vaults of a safe deposit
company.
101

George and Charles Merriam, the publishers of Webster’s American
Dictionary, were one of the first publishers to employ a large corps of editors,
writers, and other assistants. Their team worked in Springfield, New Haven, and
Boston for several years on what would be the 1864 edition of Webster’s
American Dictionary. Ostensibly, Dr. Noah Porter was the editor of this new
edition. But his work was made possible by a huge staff of editors, subeditors,
special managing editorial assistants, and full-time readers who were paid to
find citations.
102

The huge staffs of these reference book projects also seemed to help open
the field to more women.
103
While the percentage of women working on late
nineteenth-century reference books was still quite small, their presence and
recognition in the pages of these books was a notable change from just a few
decades earlier.
104
The American Cyclopaedia had two women who worked on the
first and second edition. Rose Terry (Cooke) was a writer and poet who wrote for
a number of different leading publications including Putnam’s Magazine. When
she was six years old she was already reading and memorizing parts of Walker’s

101
“Heavy Damage by Water,” New-York Tribune, July 8, 1888; “The Fire in The Century
Building,” Critic, July 14, 1888, 19.
102
Robert Keith Leavitt, Noah’s Ark, New England Yankees, and the Endless Quest
(Springfield: G. & C. Merriam, 1947), 60.
103
The contributions of women were even noted in an 1897 article on reference book
compilers. Charles H. Cochrane, “The Men Who Make the Dictionaries,” Printer and Bookmakers,
November 1897, 142.
104
In addition to contributing to larger projects, some women even published their own
specialized dictionaries. See, for example, Anna Randall-Diehl, Two Thousand Words and Their
Definitions; not in Webster’s Dictionary (New York: J.S. Ogilvie, 1888). On this book, see James N.
Tidwell, “A Neglected Source of Americanisms,” American Speech 35, no. 4 (December 1960): 266-
269.

45
Dictionary. She published her own book of poetry in 1860.
105
Lady Blanche
Murphy (1845-1881) was English by birth (she was the eldest daughter of the Earl
of Gainsborough) but moved to New York in 1875 with her husband. Like Terry,
she made her living writing, and was a regular contributor to the Atlantic,
Scribner’s Monthly, the Galaxy, and the Catholic World. William Dean Howells, the
editor at the Atlantic, said of Murphy that “she had the most analytical mind of
any woman I have ever known.” Her promising career was cut short when she
died unexpectedly at 36.
106

The Century Dictionary had over five hundred people working on it,
including a talented group of women. Many of them went on to work for the
Standard Dictionary. Helen Gray Cone (b. 1859) was a graduate of the New York
City Normal College. In addition to her work for the Century, she was a writer
who contributed to publications like the Atlantic Monthly, the Century Magazine,
and Harper’s Magazine.
107
Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye (b. 1858), was the daughter
of the famous nineteenth-century novelist Edward Eggleston. She studied the
literature of the Middle English period and supplied the editors of the Century
with five hundred new words and definitions.
108
Mary L. Avery was another
female contributor to the Century. She graduated from Vassar in 1868 and went
on to teach English language and literature at Vassar and later in Wisconsin. In
1887 she wrote The Responsibility of College Graduates to the Correct Standard of

105
New York Times, July 19, 1892.
106
Ellen McRoberts Mason, “The Story of the Lady Blanche,” Granite Monthly 21, no. 4
(October 1896): 220-225.
107
Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., American Women: Fifteen Hundred
Biographies (New York: Mast, Crowell, & Kirkpatrick, 1897), 1:198.
108
Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., American Women: Fifteen Hundred
Biographies (New York: Mast, Crowell, & Kirkpatrick, 1897), 2:639-640.

46
English (Northampton, Mass: 1887).
109
But the woman who did the most for the
Century Dictionary was Katharine Bontecou Wood. From 1882 to 1891, Wood was
one of seven editorial assistants and the only woman. Wood’s job was to help
collect new words. She was also in charge of dealing with readers and gathering
quotations to illustrate the definitions. After the dictionary was published, she
collected the names for the Century Cyclopedia of Names (1894) and wrote all of the
articles related to her specialty, English literature and characters in fiction.
Indeed, Wood was known for her thorough knowledge of Shakespeare and other
early modern playwrights.
110
In 1896, she put out her own reference book,
Quotations for Occasions which offered up choice quotations that men and women
could use for toasts as well as on dinner menus, cards, and invitations. She died
in New York in 1913.
111

In addition to hiring more people to work on reference book projects,
publishers also looked to hiring specialists, each of whom was an expert in his or
her own field. This turn towards experts reflected the growth of specialization in
American universities and in American culture more generally during this
period.
112
Whereas earlier American compilers were lauded for being generalists,
late nineteenth-century compilers were not expected to know everything. As one
writer in the Century Magazine explained of dictionaries in 1892, “One man alone,
however great, cannot make any complete and accurate dictionary of all parts of
the language, nor a good dictionary even of many parts of the language, nor an
absolutely complete and authoritative dictionary of any part of the language. The

109
Helen H. Backus, “Vassar College,” Outlook, August 18, 1894, 262.
110
William Webster Ellsworth, A Golden Age of Authors: A Publisher’s Recollection (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1919), 19.
111
New-York Tribune, June 15, 1913.
112
Higham, 3-18.

47
human intellect is too limited, and life is too short.” Instead, a great dictionary
required “specialization and cooperation.” The author conceded that with this
change in the way dictionaries were produced, readers did lose the “whimsical
definitions” of many earlier compilers. But they gained “completeness,”
“precision,” and “scientific dignity.”
113
The same also became true for
encyclopedias. A corps of experts assured the reader that the information in front
of them was up to date, accurate, and without bias. Writing in the preface of his
encyclopedia in 1880, the publisher A.J. Johnson called attention to the “galaxy of
talent” that had been assembled to make his book. These names were listed
prominently in the first few pages. Johnson continued, “No name has been
included in the list merely to give an adventitious lustre to the book. All are the
names of active workers, and they are placed there to give the public a secure
guaranty of the trustworthiness of the varied information which these volumes
embrace.”
114

No reference book epitomized this obsession with specialists as much as
Isaac K. Funk’s the Standard Dictionary. This two-volume dictionary was so
named, according to its authors, “in just recognition of the expert knowledge and
authoritative scholarship of the editors of various departments.”
115
Indeed, the
Standard’s reliance on a team of experts was impressive. During the four years in
which they compiled the dictionary, they had a staff of 247 specialists and nearly
500 readers for quotations. These specialists concentrated on words in very
specific fields, from yachting (W.P. Stephens, editor of Forest and Stream) to

113
“Why and How the Great Dictionary Was Made,” Century Illustrated Magazine, January
1892, 13.
114
Barnard and Guyot, vii.
115
Funk, xiv.

48
poultry (George E. Peer, Secretary and Treasurer of the American Poultry
Association) to chess (W. Steinitz, editor of International Chess Magazine) to postal
terms (Wilking B. Cooley, ex-chief clerk, US Post Office Department) to Japanese
ceramics (Edward S. Morse, former Professor of Zoology, Imperial University of
Tokyo).
116
The publishers of the Standard hoped that their reliance on experts
would inspire confidence in their dictionary. Indeed, a surviving canvassing
book of the Standard from 1893 shows that the publishers used their experts as a
major selling point with readers. The book includes a chart that compares the
number specialists on the editorial staffs of each of the other major dictionaries.
The Standard, with their 247 specialists, was the clear winner over the Century
Dictionary (81 specialists), Webster’s Dictionary (41 specialists), and Worcester’s
Dictionary (18 specialists).
117
As the Cultivator and Country Gentleman explained in
their review of the Standard Dictionary in 1894: “As to the dependence which may
safely be placed on the information given in the dictionary before us, we think
there can be no doubt that it is entitled to stand very, very, high. No pains or
expense seem to have been spared to secure on every even minute point the best
matured opinions of the best experts.”
118

As we have seen, providing authoritative information, whether the result
of the intense research of one polymath, or the factory-like production of many
specialists, was an important part of the way reference books marketed
themselves to readers. The next chapter looks specifically at how publishers

116
Funk, iii-v.
117
Isaac K. Funk, ed., canvassing book for the Standard Dictionary (New York: Funk and
Wagnalls, 1893), n.p., Zinman Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of
Pennsylvania.
118
Cultivator and Country Gentleman, April 12, 1894, 296.

49
continued to feed the fiction of authoritative reference books, even as they
undermined the idea by altering these books to serve commercial purposes.

50
Chapter Two
Wisdom for the Masses in a Nutshell

In December of 1870, Horace Greeley, founder of the famous New-York
Tribune, was in Central Park with his friend, the publisher Alvin J. Johnson.
During the course of their stroll, Greeley mentioned his desire for an
encyclopedia that would meet his needs, as well as the needs of all “active
workers.” Existing works, he complained, were not suitable for “the class of busy
and practical men” of which he was a part. He explained that most
encyclopedias were too large and too difficult to search through. “I don’t care
upon whose shoulders Humboldt’s cloak may have fallen,” said Greeley,
referring to the famous Prussian explorer, “or whether he ever had one, but I
simply want to know when and where he was born, what he did, and when he
died.”
1
As a result of this conversation, Greeley and Johnson decided to create a
better encyclopedia, a book that Greeley could keep at his elbow when he was
writing, along with his dictionary and atlas. In the end, Greeley died before the
work was finished, and what came to be known as Johnson’s Cyclopaedia ended
up significantly larger and more expensive than Greeley had envisioned.
Still, Greeley’s idea, that reference books should be designed to suit the
needs of a mass market of readers, and not just an intellectual elite, was a
relatively new one. By the late nineteenth century however, almost every
dictionary and encyclopedia took steps to appeal to a wide audience of readers.
Reference books, thus, came to reflect the imperatives of the marketplace.

1
Barnard and Guyot, v-vii.

51
This chapter explores how, between 1840 and 1880, American publishers
began to promote, market and alter the content and format of dictionaries and
encyclopedias in order to make them appeal to a wide audience of readers.
Publishers aimed to make reference books seem trustworthy, unbiased, up to
date, and finally, easily searchable. As many literary scholars have argued, the
materiality of a book constitutes an important part of its meaning. Even before
the text of a book is read, its physicality influences the way that readers approach
it.
2
Publishers knew this, and they devised a number of different ways to modify
their books to suit reader tastes.
While I discuss a range of reference books and publishers, I focus
particularly on Webster’s dictionaries. Noah Webster may have created
America’s most famous and enduring dictionary, but it was his publishers,
George and Charles Merriam, who made it so. When they took control in 1847,
they knew that drastic changes has to be made in order to get the book to sell
well. Although Webster had been somewhat of a skilled promoter of his work,
the dictionary was still too expensive for most Americans, and there were
increasingly more options for readers to choose from. After Webster’s death, the
Merriams used a three-pronged approach to selling Webster. First, they
undertook a masterful marketing campaign. They constantly advertised in
newspapers and periodicals, gave books away for free to reviewers, and
published pamphlet after pamphlet attacking their rivals as plagiarists whose
books were not authoritative. Second, they made frequent revisions (some more
extensive and legitimate than others) in order to keep it up to date. Finally, they

2
Michele Moylan and Lane Stiles, eds., Reading Books: Essays on the Material Text and
Literature in America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).

52
altered the material appearance of Webster’s, making it easier for readers to read
and search through. Other publishers eventually undertook similar approaches,
and the result was that by the late nineteenth-century, the purpose and content
of reference books had shifted. They became consumer goods, first and foremost,
designed to suit the differing needs of American readers.

A Brief History of Nineteenth-Century American Book Publishing
The American book trade underwent a number of changes during the
nineteenth century. First, beginning in the early nineteenth century, publishers
became more willing to take risks, and began publishing a growing number of
titles written by American authors, instead of just British reprints. This
development had important consequences for the reference book market, and
this period saw a huge increase in the number of dictionaries and encyclopedias
compiled by Americans. At the same time, British reference works continued to
hold a vaunted position within the American marketplace. Authorized and
unauthorized reprints of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, abounded,
even by the late nineteenth century when there were a variety of American
encyclopedias to choose from.
Second, by the publishing industry became more centralized. New York,
Philadelphia, and Boston were all centers for book publishing in the early
nineteenth century. However, thanks in large part to the building of the Erie
Canal, New York eventually supplanted its rivals.
3
Most of the major reference
book publishers were located in these three cities. In New York, for example,

3
William Charvat, Literary Publishing in America, 1790-1850 (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1993 [1959]), 17-37.

53
there was D. Appleton & Co., publisher of the American Cyclopaedia, The Century
Co., publisher of the Century Dictionary, Funk & Wagnalls, publisher of the
Standard Dictionary, and many others. Philadelphia had J.B. Lippincott & Co.,
publisher of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia and both Webster’s and Worcester’s
dictionaries, T. Elwood Zell, publisher of Zell’s Encyclopaedia, and J.M. Stoddart,
publisher of the American edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Boston was the
home base for Little, Brown & Co., publisher of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and
Jenks, Hickling, and Swan (and its later iterations), publisher of Worcester’s
Dictionary. By the late nineteenth century, Chicago emerged as a center for
publishing activities in the Midwest.
4
Chicago’s publishers were particularly
focused on the subscription book market, which meant that these firms dealt
with a lot of reference books. The Chicago Instalment (sic) Book Co. published
Chambers’ Encyclopedia, Belford, Clarke & Co. published the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, and F.J. Schulte published The Little Giant Cyclopedia. Of course, not all
publishers worked and operated in these four cities. Perhaps the best-known
reference-book publisher was G. & C. Merriam Co., which published Webster’s
Dictionary in Springfield, Massachusetts. What is particularly notable about this
list is that many of the firms engaged in reference-book publishing in the
nineteenth century were large, established publishers, who had sufficient capital
to afford such an expensive undertaking. Smaller publishers that had reference
books on their lists were usually printing old or foreign editions.
As America industrialized, so too did the book trade. New technologies
such as the use of metal printing presses, stereotype and electrotype plates, as

4
John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 2, The Expansion of an
Industry, 1865-1919 (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1975), 427-448.

54
well as the introduction of cloth binding had an important impact on the
production and sale of books. However, as Michael Winship has noted, that
impact is not easy to assess.
5
Advances in printing technologies helped increase
production and lower the price on some reference books. But publishers also put
out higher-cost editions with fancy bindings, illustrations, and other additions.
General multi-volume encyclopedias remained relatively expensive for most
Americans throughout the nineteenth century. Publishers were closely connected
to these technological changes because they also often served as printers and
booksellers. Indeed, some of the larger, more established firms even built their
own manufacturing operations. D. Appleton & Co. had its own printing plant by
1855. After the Civil War, the company created one large manufacturing
operation in Brooklyn which employed 600 people.
6

Despite technological advancements, book publishing was not an easy
business. Up until the late nineteenth century, there existed no real mass market
for books. In addition, the profit margins were often slim. According to Donald
Sheehan, most publishers in the 1880s only started making money on a book
after they had sold 1,000 copies.
7
Discounts by publishers, booksellers, and
agents as well as rampant piracy also worked to drive down profits. Firms
frequently merged or went out of business completely, especially after an
economic downturn (such as the Panic of 1837 or 1857). Large, established
publishers were the most successful during the nineteenth century, and many of
them survived well into the twentieth century. Publishers that specialized in

5
Michael Winship, “Manufacturing and Book Production,” in Casper, Groves,
Nissenbaum, and Winship, 69.
6
Tebbel, 1:261.
7
Donald Sheehan, This Was Publishing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1952), 29.

55
religious literature or children’s books and textbooks also tended to be more
profitable than other firms.
8

One final development in the book trade during the nineteenth century
was that publishers, jobbers, and booksellers began talking to one another, and
even working together in ways they had never done before. By the late
nineteenth century, Publishers’ Weekly was the standard organ of the book trade.
9

Better communication was crucial in order for the trade to continue to grow.
Frequent communication also made it possible for publishers to get a better idea
of what their competitors were doing. Information on other firms’ sales was
important, because by the second half of the nineteenth century, competition
among publishers for readers was fierce. Publishers used a variety of different
tactics in order to get people to buy their books, but no other nineteenth-century
reference book publisher was as successful as George and Charles Merriam.

“An Extensive System of Advertising and Puffing”

By the time Noah Webster published his American Dictionary, in 1828, he
was seventy years old. Despite his advanced age, Webster did his best to
encourage sales of the work. He traveled to Washington D.C., where he secured
endorsements for the dictionary from 31 senators and 73 representatives. These
names were then used extensively in advertisements.
10
He also embarked on a
lecture tour throughout New England (although one newspaper reported that he

8
Tebbel, 1:206.
9
Jeffrey D. Groves, “Trade Communication,” in Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and
Winship 130-139.
10
Micklethwait, 218.

56
seemed tired and insisted on delivering his lecture from a chair).
11
But Webster’s
greatest marketing strategy was to attack his rivals in print. In so doing, he was
able to get people talking about his American Dictionary in a way they had never
before done with any other reference book. He first disparaged British
lexicographers like Samuel Johnson. Eventually he moved on to American
compilers, including Massachusetts-born dictionary compiler Lyman Cobb.
Finally, he turned to attacking the person who would come to be his biggest
threat: Joseph E. Worcester.
12
Worried that Worcester was taking away his near
monopoly on the dictionary market, Webster fought back the only way he knew
how: by accusing Worcester of stealing words and definitions from him. Thus
began the so-called “War of Dictionaries,” which, for a time, became a cause
célèbre in the United States. It also became the primary way in which Webster’s
publishers, long after Webster himself was dead, marketed the dictionary:
Webster’s was the original, the best; Worcester’s was just a pale imitation.
13

The two men had similar backgrounds. Both were born and raised in New
England (Webster in Connecticut and Worcester in New Hampshire), both went
to college at Yale, and both spent time as schoolteachers before becoming
lexicographers.
14
Nonetheless, there remained some important differences.
Webster was full of himself and could be quite difficult, where as Worcester was
known for his humility and kindness. Webster was an orthodox
Congregationalist, while Worcester allied himself with Harvard’s community of

11
“Noah Webster,” Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics (N.H.), July 23, 1831.
12
Cobb was not much of a target, as he was not a skilled lexicographer. See Micklethwait,
222-224.
13
On the long history of plagiarism in dictionaries, see Jonathon Green, Chasing the Sun:
Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They Made (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996), 27-30.
14
Worcester taught in Salem, Massachusetts from 1812-1815. His most famous pupil was
the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. See Margaret B. Moore, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 79-84.

57
Unitarians.
15
Indeed, Webster’s belief that language was given to man by God
ran throughout his dictionary. He not only based his etymologies on Scriptures,
but he also used ample quotations from the Bible to illustrate his definitions.
16

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Webster, who had lived through the
American Revolution, had long desired a uniform, national standard for spelling
in America that was different from England.
17
Although this passion had
subsided somewhat by the time he wrote his dictionary, he still proposed some
odd spellings for words including, “chimistry” instead of “chemistry,”
“nightmar” instead of “nightmare,” “juse” instead of “juice,” and “nehboor”
instead of “neighbor,” to name just a few. Worcester, on the other hand, mixed
what had become the standard in American usage with traditional British
spellings (such as “centre” instead of “center”). In general, Worcester was much
less dogmatic than Webster. Where as Webster constantly harped on the
“correct” method of spelling or pronunciation, Worcester was quick to cite
multiple authorities. As one twentieth-century lexicographer put it, Worcester’s
work was notable for its “neatness, precision, caution, moderation, and
elegance.”
18

The origins of the Dictionary War can be traced to 1829, when Webster’s
original publisher, Sherman Converse, approached Webster about creating an

15
Micklethwait, 156
16
Micklethwait, 158, 186-187.
17
On the origins of Webster’s interest in standardization, see Jill Lepore, A is for American:
Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 15-41;
Ronald A. Wells, Dictionaries and the Authoritarian Tradition (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 55-63.
18
Joseph H. Friend, The Development of American Lexicography, 1789-1864 (The Hague:
Mouton, 1967), 102. Friend is one of a number of linguistic scholars who have trumpeted
Worcester’s importance within the history of American lexicography. See also, James H. Sledd
and Gwin J. Kolb, Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary: Essays in the Biography of a Book (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1955), 204; George Philip Krapp, The English Language in America (New York:
Frederick Unger Publishing, 1960 [1925]), 1:370-372.

58
abridged version of his famous dictionary. Webster agreed, but because he was
not healthy enough to undertake the work himself, he charged Converse with
finding someone who would do it for him. They quickly settled on Worcester.
Worcester was well-known at that time not only because he had edited the well-
regarded American Almanac, but also because he had compiled an abridgement of
Johnson’s Dictionary. When Converse approached Worcester, however,
Worcester was hesitant, mostly because he was already in the process of
compiling his own dictionary. But the money and prestige were too much to pass
up, and he eventually agreed. This was a decision he would come to regret for
the rest of his life.
19
When Worcester’s abridgement was published, it was an
immediate success and continued to be reprinted for decades. The abridgement
sold well in part because it only cost $6, compared with $20 for the unabridged.
20

There is some evidence that Webster was not happy with the abridgement—
perhaps because Worcester attempted to modify some of Webster’s more
controversial spellings and etymologies—but if he was dissatisfied, Webster
never said anything about it.
21

In 1830, Joseph Worcester published his Comprehensive Pronouncing and
Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language, to favorable reviews.
22
It was a
much smaller dictionary than the abridgement, at only 400 pages compared to

19
Worcester was upfront about his regrets in a letter to Chauncey Goodrich. Worcester to
Chauncey Goodrich, September 3, 1846, Worcester Papers, MHS.
20
It was republished from 1830-1842, 1844, 1845-1846.
21
Burkett, 175.
22
The Comprehensive Dictionary was originally published by Hilliard, Gray, Little, and
Wilkins in Boston. Later it was known as Hilliard, Gray & Co. In addition to Worcester, the firm
published books by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Jared Sparks. After William Hilliard’s
death in 1836, Charles C. Little founded his own business with another member of the firm,
James Brown. Today we know them as Little, Brown & Co. Other Hilliard partners John Hubbard
Wilkins and Richard Bridge Carter eventually formed their own paper dealing and publishing
firm, Wilkins, Carter & Co., which published Worcester’s next dictionary. See Tebbel, 1:442-443;
John Lauris Blake, A Biographical Dictionary (Philadelphia: H. Cowperthwait, 1859), 250.

59
the abridgement’s 940 pages. It lacked etymologies and its definitions were quite
short, although its strength was that it emphasized pronunciation. In an age of
mass immigration, when speaking correctly signified Americaness to some
extent, it is no surprise that Worcester’s focus on pronunciation turned out to be
a popular feature. Despite the book’s success, it took Webster nearly four years
before he finally fired the first public shot at Worcester. On November 26, 1834,
an anonymous article in the Worcester Palladium appeared accusing Worcester of
plagiarizing from Webster: “If we had a statute which could fix its grasp on those
who pilfer the products of the mind, as readily as our laws embrace the common
thief, Mr. Worcester would hardly escape with a light mulct.”
23
Such an
accusation should have been a non-issue from the start. Lexicographers have
always borrowed material from one another, and in fact, Webster borrowed
much from Johnson. But for some reason, Worcester decided to engage. A
number of exchanges between Worcester, his supporters, and Webster’s
supporters followed. Finally, Webster himself wrote in, confirming that
Worcester had indeed taken words and definitions from his dictionary. He
subsequently presented a list of one hundred and twenty-one words that he
charged had been taken from his work.
24
On February 11, 1835, Worcester wrote
back, refuting the charge, and arguing convincingly that of those one hundred
and twenty-one words, almost all could be found in other dictionaries. He also
noted that he often found words in sources other than dictionaries. He
concluded:
If I saw in your Dictionary a word with which I was familiar, or which I
knew was in established use, or found in respectable authors, I regarded it

23
Worcester Palladium, November 26, 1824.
24
Worcester Palladium, December 17, 1834; January 28, 1835.

60
as a word belonging, not exclusively to any individual, but to all who
write and speak the language, to be used by them on all proper occasions,
even though it was not to be found in any Dictionary but yours.
25

Almost immediately, people began to take sides. The United States became a
divided nation: were you for Webster or Worcester? The New York Times later
compared the controversy to the famous Battle of the Books.
26
Much of the
support for Webster or Worcester was based on academic affiliations—Webster,
who lived in New Haven, was a Yale man, while Worcester, who lived in
Cambridge, was backed by Harvard (even though he had also gone to Yale).
Literary men readily supplied their opinions, and their endorsements of one
dictionary versus the other were used extensively in the publishers’
advertisements. But the debate was not limited to authors and academics.
Fourteen-year old Elizabeth Ellery Dana, the sister of the Boston politician
Richard Henry Dana Jr., wrote in her journal in 1860 about the “many disputes
concerning Webster’s & Worcester’s” she had with one of her girlfriends.
27

Some men revealed themselves to be on Worcester’s side for more
personal reasons: they felt they had been wronged by Webster. Reverend
William Allen, the former president of Bowdoin College, gave his collection of
between 6,000 and 7,00 words to Webster to use in his dictionary in 1840. When
Webster published his second edition in 1841, he made use of the words in the
main body of the dictionary, and in the appendix. However he made no mention
of Allen or his help. An anonymous friend of Allen’s wrote to Webster, asking
him to acknowledge his indebtedness to Dr. Allen. He noted that if this

25
Worcester Palladium, February 11, 1835.
26
New York Times, May 26, 1860.
27
Elizabeth Ellery Dana Journal, February 7, 1860, Dana Family Papers, Schlesinger
Library, Harvard University.

61
information were made public, it would be “delicious food for your enemies, and
possibly an inexplicable ground of painful doubt to your friends.”
28
Nothing ever
came of the threat. Allen subsequently gave his list to Worcester, hoping that
Worcester “would set this matter right with the public.”
29
Worcester
acknowledged Allen’s help, but declined to get involved in Allen’s fight with
Webster.
30
The Reverend Samuel Agnew also had a friend, a Mr. Ord, who had
compiled a list of words and given them to Webster, only to have Webster use
them without acknowledgement. He too attempted to give the list to Worcester.
31

Worcester himself was much more generous with his friends and contributors.
As his friend, the British lexicographer B.H. Smart explained, “It is an
understood thing that we borrow for each other: at the same time we are bound
to give credit for original improvement where such credit is due.”
32

The fight was truly personal for Worcester, and he spent the rest of his life
trying to free himself from claims that his dictionary was little more than a copy
of Webster.
33
When his next major work, A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the
English Language, was published in Boston by Wilkins, Carter & Co. in 1846,

28
Letter S Anonymous to Noah Webster, January 24, 1842. As quoted in Burkett, 182.
29
William Allen to Worcester, July 26, 1844; August 25, 1846, Worcester Papers, MHS.
30
Edwin A. Miles, “William Allen and the Webster-Worcester Dictionary Wars,”
Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America (1991): 1-15.
31
Samuel Agnew to Worcester, November 3, 1854, Worcester Papers, MHS.
32
B.H. Smart to Worcester, March 4, 1847, Worcester Papers, MHS.
33
At the same time as the fight raged on, American courts began a series of important
rulings related to question of authorship when it came to compilations and abridgements. In
Grey v. Russell (1839), the publishers of Gould’s Grammar (1833) which was an enlargement of
Adam’s Latin Grammar, asked Russell, Shattuck, & Co., the publishers of Adam’s Latin Grammar by
C.D. Cleveland, to cease and desist printing and selling what was essentially Gould’s Grammar
with a different author. In 1839, Justice Story agreed to the injunction, noting that a compilation
could be copyrighted, as long as the compiler had arranged them in a new or unique way. Just
two years later, a similar case arose with Charles Upham’s Life of Washington, which was an
abridgement of Jared Spark’s Writings of George Washington. Justice Story ruled that abridgements
did not infringe on copyright claims as long as the abridgement did not diminish the value of the
original work. See Meredith L. McGill, “Copyright,” in Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and
Winship, 172-173.

62
Worcester clearly stated in the preface that he had not taken any from Webster
that could not be found in other dictionaries. He made the same claim in his
largest work, A Dictionary of the English Language, which was published in Boston
by his new publisher, Swan, Brewer and Tileston in 1860.
34
Many people
remained unconvinced. One anonymous reviewer of Worcester’s Dictionary,
writing in the New Englander, noted that “not a few [definitions] appear to have
taken shape under at least a sort of inductive influence from Webster.” He went
on to suggest that perhaps Worcester had looked at Webster’s work, but
accidentally. The Imperial Dictionary, for example, was a British dictionary that
was largely copied from Webster. So could Worcester have consulted that work
without realizing its true origins?
35
“The identity is gone, though a familiar
resemblance is left,” he concluded.
36

Worcester may have despised the fight with Webster, but Webster’s
publishers loved it. In fact, George and Charles Merriam were known to say,
“Thank God for Worcester!”
37
Noah Webster died in 1843, but the rivalry
between the two men kept Webster’s Dictionary in the public eye. Worcester,
along with his supporters, understood how valuable his work was to the
marketing efforts of the Merriams. As his friend John Kelly wrote to Worcester in
1854:

34
Swan, Brewer & Tileston was founded as Jenks, Hickling, and Swan in 1856. It then
became Hickling, Swan, and Brewer, followed by Swan, Brewer and Tileston. Eventually it was
just Brewer & Tileston. Worcester stuck with the firm through its many name changes, and his
dictionary was largely responsible for the firm’s fame as a schoolbook publisher. See Madeline B.
Stern, Imprints on History: Book Publishers and American Frontiers (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1956), 46-47.
35
Probably not. Worcester was known for having one of the most extensive libraries in
the United States, with over 2,000 volumes. For a description of Worcester’s library, see Luther
Farnham, A Glance at Private Libraries (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1855), 40.
36
New Englander, May 1860, 412.
37
Robert Keith Leavitt, Noah’s Ark: New England Yankees and the Endless Quest
(Springfield: G. & C. Merriam, 1947), 56.

63
It is quite evident that for some time past the present publishers of
Webster’s Dictionary—not content with forcing it continuously before the
public, in every way commonly considered fair in business, by filling
almost gratuitously through their Agents, the public schools, and printing
offices with copies and by an extensive system of advertising and
puffing:--have still further sought to build up their work by a regular plan
of traducing and pulling down you and your work.
38

Nonetheless, the Merriams knew that changes in the dictionary had to be
made in order for it to remain the standard. Webster’s peculiar spelling never
caught on the way he had hoped, and indeed, many reviewers complained about
this issue. So, at the same time that they filled the local newspapers with their
slogan, “Get the Best!” the Merriams charged Yale professor Chauncey Goodrich
with correcting Webster’s orthography and pronunciation to bring it into line
with Worcester’s. Over time, the Merriams had their various editors change so
much of Webster’s Dictionary, that one publication, the American Educational
Monthly, wondered whether the name “Webster’s Dictionary,” was “not getting
to be a misnomer.”
39

In 1850, the London publisher Henry George Bohn purchased the
stereotype plates for Worcester’s 1846 University and Critical Dictionary from
Worcester’s publishers at the time, Wilkins, Carter, & Co.
40
When he finally
printed them, he changed the title page to indicate that Noah Webster, not
Joseph Worcester, was the main author of the dictionary. He also deleted the
paragraph in the preface where Worcester explained that he did not take any

38
John Kelly to Worcester, June 27, 1854, Worcester Papers, MHS.
39
American Educational Monthly, December 1864, 383.
40
For more on Bohn, see Brian Louis Pearce, “Henry George Bohn (1796-1884): ‘The
Bookseller,’” RSA Journal 140, no. 5434 (November 1992): 788-790. For more on the transatlantic
trade in books, see Michael Winship, “The Transatlantic Book Trade and Anglo-American
Literary Culture in the Nineteenth Century,” in Reciprocal Influences: Literary Production,
Distribution, and Consumption in America, ed. Steven Fink and Susan S. Williams (Columbus: Ohio
State University Press, 1999), 98-122.

64
words from Webster.
41
When Worcester’s publishers found out about the
problem, they decided not to tell Worcester. But once the Merriams got wind of
it, they realized the story presented a perfect opportunity for them to renew the
war. They published an anonymous article, which was reprinted in newspapers
across the country, arguing that the Bohn dictionary was proof that Worcester
had copied from Webster. Worcester did not care about Bohn, but he did care
about his reputation. He hit back with a pamphlet entitled “A Gross Literary
Fraud Exposed: Relating to the Publication of Worcester’s Dictionary in London”
in which he defended his work.
42
For the most part, it seems that few if any
people actually believed the Merriams’ charges. Even Goodrich, the editor of the
1847 edition of Webster’s American Dictionary, told Worcester he knew Bohn had
acted alone.
43
Bohn, for his part, denied any wrong-doing. He claimed that he
thought he had purchased the 1829 abridged version of Webster that Worcester
had prepared. When he found out the truth, it was simply too late for him to
change his advertisements.
44
Bohn’s explanation was only partly true. As David
Micklethwait has pointed out, Bohn knew that the dictionary was Worcester’s,
but he wanted to sell it as the 1829 abridgement. He hoped it could pass it off as
Webster’s, and no one would know.
45
In this time before international copyright,
it was as easy for Bohn to alter an American’s work as it was for and American

41
Although many scholars tend to focus on American piracy of British authors, the piracy
went both ways. Worcester was not the only one to have his book altered by British publishers.
Francis Lieber, a friend of Worcester’s, and the editor of the Encyclopedia Americana, had his work
republished by Alexander Whitelaw, under the new name Popular Encyclopedia (1841). The work
went through multiple editions and there was nothing Lieber could do to stop it.
42
The pamphlet was first published by Hickling, Swan, and Brown in 1853, but as the
fight raged on, Worcester felt the need to add various appendices. The final version was
published in 1855.
43
Chauncey Goodrich to Worcester, November 2, 1853, Worcester Papers, MHS.
44
Burkett, 233.
45
Micklethwait, 284.

65
publisher to alter a British author’s book.
46
In Bohn’s eyes then, he was just doing
what had so often been done to him.
The fights did not end after the Bohn incident, but rather, actually seemed
to intensify. One of the Merriams’ favorite tricks was to publish articles through
their friends, in which they claimed that no one bought or used Worcester’s
Dictionary.
47
One especially devastating article claimed that even in Boston,
Worcester’s hometown, readers at the Mercantile Library and the Boston
Athenaeum repeatedly consulted Webster, while Worcester’s dictionary
remained practically untouched. In 1860, when an editorial appeared in the
Boston Congregationalist (which supported Webster for religious reasons) telling
people not to buy Worcester’s Dictionary, the Merriams bought up all the papers
and distributed them around town. They also turned the article into an
advertisement and published it in newspapers across the United States.
48

The Merriams were relentless in their marketing efforts of Webster. They
were continually thinking of new ways to ensure that their dictionary remained a
top seller. As we have already seen, their main tactic was to contrast Webster
with Worcester. They accused Worcester of copying Webster, instead of going
after the many pirated copies of Webster’s that began to fill the marketplace.
49
It
was a winning strategy, which ensured that the War of the Dictionaries would

46
The United States finally recognized international copyright in 1891. See James J.
Barnes, Authors, Publishers, and Politicians: The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement
1815-1854 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974); Aubert J. Clark, The Movement for
International Copyright in Nineteenth Century America (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1960).
47
“Dictionaries in Boston,” Mercantile Library Reporter, March 1855, reprinted in Christian
Examiner and Religious Miscellany, January 1856.
48
As noted in William Draper Swan, “The Critic Criticized and Worcester Vindicated…”
(Boston: Swan, Brewer and Tileston, 1860), 4.
49
Burkett, 182. Only once Worcester had been vanquished by the Merriams, in the late
1880s, did they start to go after unauthorized editions of Webster’s Dictionary. See Micklethwait,
300-301.

66
take on a cultural significance far greater that Worcester himself could have ever
imagined. Years later, American publishers of encyclopedias tried to start their
own fight in order to stimulate sales. The so-called “Battle of the Encyclopedias”
which occurred between Encyclopaedia Britannica, Appleton’s American
Cyclopaedia, and Johnson’s Cyclopaedia never quite reached the heights of the
dictionary wars, but it did get Americans talking about encyclopedias.
50

A Dictionary for Every Reader
The Merriams also increased Webster’s market share by helping to create
and manage an entire series of Webster’s dictionaries, each one at a different
price, and each one aimed at a slightly different reader.
51
In later years, the
company referred to this series as the “Webster Pyramid.” At the very base of the
pyramid was the Royal Quarto. Then followed the Quarto Unabridged, the Royal
Octavo, the University, the Counting House, the Academic, the High School, the
Common School, the Primary, the Speller, the Army & Navy, and the Pocket.
52

Through the series, such distinct groups as students, business men, scholars, and
families could each have a dictionary that was specifically designed for them and
their needs. The Counting House edition, for example, included tables of weights
and measures, as well as some essential business laws.
The Merriam strategy was to contract with a number of other publishers
to produce the many dictionaries in the series, thus ensuring what Charles

50
See Educational Weekly, May 8, 1879, 234 and Herman Kogan, The Great EB, 65-67 for an
overview of the fight.
51
Although Noah Webster himself had begun the series with his abridgement and
Primary and High School dictionaries, the different publishers involved in these books did not
really work together in any coordinated way. See Burkett, 178-179.
52
G. & C. Merriam were constantly coming up with dictionaries with new titles to
compete with others that entered the market. In 1879, for example, they published the Handy
Dictionary and in 1884 the Condensed and Practical Dictionaries.

67
Merriam later called a “concentration of the Webster interest.”
53
George Merriam
explained this further in a letter to Webster’s son, William G. Webster, in 1847:
A distribution of the different works, like that which exists at present,
among several publishers, is, doubtless, more advantageous to the parties
receiving the copyright than a concentration of the whole in one
Publishing house, as it secures a greater amount of bookselling influence.
A larger number of copies of both the large works will doubtless now be
sold than if one house published both.
54

The Merriams’ plan worked. By sharing the profits with several other publishers,
the Merriams were able to create an environment in which almost every major
publisher in America was promoting Webster’s Dictionary. For example, the
Merriams gave D. Appleton & Co. of New York the rights to Webster’s Speller in
the 1850s. In addition to paying the Merriams a fee per copy sold, D. Appleton &
Co. also agreed to place advertisements for the Webster Series in their printed
lists, catalogues, and in the back of their own schoolbooks. Finally, D. Appleton
& Co. promised that their own agents would promote the introduction of
Webster into the schools they sold to.
55
This agreement was a huge coup for the
Merriams, for, as the next chapter will explain, the mass distribution of books
was one of the biggest challenges facing publishers in the nineteenth century.
While G. & C. Merriam continued to publish the large American Dictionary,
the company first relied on the Mason Brothers of New York to publish the
various smaller dictionaries. Mason Brothers published some, and subcontracted
others out to J.B. Lippincott & Co. in Philadelphia. When a dispute led to the end
of that contract in 1867, the Merriams then made an agreement with Ivison,

53
Charles Merriam’s Recollections of Various Particulars in the Publishing of Webster’s
Dictionaries, unpublished manuscript, 19, G. & C. Merriam Company Archive, Beinecke Library,
Yale University.
54
George Merriam to William G. Webster, Springfield, August 16, 1847, G. & C. Merriam
Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
55
D. Appleton to G. & C. Merriam, January 23, 1855, January 15, 1856, February 15, 1856,
G. & C. Merriam Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

68
Blakeman, Taylor & Co., also in New York. All of these publishers paid the
Merriams a royalty for every book sold. These fees ranged from 5 cents for a
book like the Primary to 25 cents for the book like the Counting House. Eventually,
Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co. simply paid a yearly fee.
56

Joseph Worcester’s publishers Brewer & Tileston also created different
dictionaries for different readers. The Worcester series included the Quarto
Dictionary, the Universal and Critical Dictionary, the Academic Dictionary, the
Comprehensive Dictionary, the Elementary Dictionary, and the School
Dictionary. Once J.B. Lippincott & Co. purchased the rights to Worcester’s works
in 1876, they created some additional titles to drum up sales.
57
But all of
Worcester’s publishers were hindered by the fact that they did not have a similar
“concentration” of Worcester interest. With so many American publishers
making money off Webster, Worcester was fighting an uphill battle.

Planned Obsolescence

Keeping reference works up to date (or at least, seeming to keep them up
to date) became an important strategy for publishers between 1840 and 1880.
Publishers put out new editions as often as they could, and justified them to the
public by saying that if Americans wanted to keep apace with the times, then
they had to buy the latest reference book. George and Charles Merriam’s success
was only made possible by the fact that they kept updating Webster’s Dictionary,
long after Webster himself was dead. When Joseph Worcester died in 1865, his

56
Homer Merriam, “Webster’s School Dictionaries,” in Charles Merriam’s Recollections of
Various Particulars in the Publishing of Webster’s Dictionaries, unpublished manuscript, July 1889,
57-61, G. & C. Merriam Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
57
For a comprehensive publication history of all of Worcester’s dictionaries, see
Appendix.

69
publishers did not do the same. They kept reprinting old editions. In a new
preface to Worcester’s Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language, which
they reprinted in 1871, Brewer & Tileston acknowledged to readers that the
dictionary had not been updated in eleven years. But they contended that the
“original design was so carefully matured and perfected” that “little occasion has
appeared in the body of the work for correction or the introduction of new
matter.”
58
In 1876 J.B. Lippincott bought the rights to Worcester from Brewer &
Tileston, but they did not make significant updates either. Without a
substantially revised edition, sales of the book continued to fall off.
59
J.B.
Lippincott were still publishing Worcester’s Dictionary in the twentieth century,
but mostly, it seems, as a promotional gift for companies to give to their
customers.
60

Readers clearly responded to new and updated books. That is why
advertisements for reference books continually pointed out that their book was
the “latest” or the “largest” a reader could find, and for those reasons, it was also
the best. No longer sources of stability, reference books were now seen as being
out of date almost as soon as they were published.
61
At the same time, producing
reference books was an expensive enterprise, and so, in order to achieve this
newness, many publishers simply tacked on additional material at the beginning

58
Joseph E. Worcester, A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer
and Tileston; New York: J. W. Schermerhorn & Co., 1871), n.p.
59
John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 2, The Expansion of an
Industry, 1865-1919 (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1975), 284.
60
In fact, J.B. Lippincott started doing this with the pocket editions of Worcester’s
Dictionary as soon as they bought the copyright. One dictionary from 1877, for example, was
presented by Dr. J.H. Schenck & Son of Philadelphia, while another from the same years was
presented by the Esterbrook Steel Pen Manufacturing in New York. Even as late as 1919, the
investment firm of Hornblower & Weeks presented customers with a Worcester’s.
61
David Hackett Fischer has noted that this idea was characteristic of the time. David
Hackett Fischer, Growing Old in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 139.

70
or end of a text.
62
In addition, while publishers continually pointed out that their
work was the “biggest,” they also acknowledged that their book did not, and
could not, contain all knowledge.
63

The appearance of “newness” to readers was taken into account when
designing revised versions of reference books. The Mason Brothers were a New
York publishing house that worked with the Merriams in publishing Webster’s
school dictionaries. When asked about their thoughts on the design of the next
edition of Webster’s Dictionary (what would be the 1864 revision), they explained
to George and Charles Merriam that it was “desirable that the page of the new
dictionary be as strikingly different as possible from that of the old, that it may
be evident at once to the most inexperienced observer that it is a new book, and
not the old plates altered.”
64
Other reference books achieved this same effect by
changing the actual name of their book.
65

In addition to changing the title pages, dictionary publishers also tried to
entice buyers by offering new editions filled with thousands of new words that
had never before been included.
66
Many of these were technical in nature. In fact,

62
One reviewer who compared the Century Dictionary to Webster’s Dictionary in 1889
noted derisively that Webster had “several appendixes, supplements, addenda, and other
excrescences which have been super-imposed upon, but not embodied in, that useful work.” Dial,
September 1889, 95.
63
For example, one advertisement for the Century Dictionary exclaimed that the Century
spent 744 pages on the first two letters of the alphabet, where as Webster only spent 187 pages. A
few paragraph later though, they admit that, “of course, no sensible person would go to a
dictionary or cyclopedia for systematic knowledge.” Dial, September 1889, 95.
64
Mason Brothers to George and Charles Merriam, February 12, 1862, G. & C. Merriam
Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
65
For example, Leo de Colange compiled Zell’s Popular Encyclopedia in 1870. The work
was then reissued under the name The National Encyclopedia by the National Encyclopedia
Publishing Company in 1873. In 1878, the title was reissued again, this time as the Universal
Encyclopedia. Finally, in 1899, Colange’s work became the School Encyclopedia. See S. Padraig
Walsh, Anglo-American General Encyclopedias: A Historical Bibliography, 1703-1967 (New York: R.R.
Bowker, 1968), 104.
66
By the late nineteenth century, reviews for dictionaries were even counting the number
of definitions each dictionary used per word. In a review of the Century Dictionary, the reviewer

71
the “unabridged” dictionary was a late nineteenth-century phenomenon,
particularly unique to the United States. The term “unabridged” was first used to
convince readers of the comprehensiveness of Webster’s, but was soon embraced
by other publishers of large dictionaries.
67
Advertisements prominently
displayed the total word counts, and compared them to competitors. In 1857, the
Merriams explicitly told their editor Chauncey Goodrich that he needed to make
the appendix for the next edition of Webster’s as “large as practicable” so that
they could then advertise the new word count.
68
Of course, few critics were
fooled by this marketing attempt. Professor William Mathews, of the University
of Chicago, explained in the Lakeside Monthly, “Webster and Worcester cram
them in by hundreds and thousands at a time; each doing his best to load and
deform his pages, and all the while triumphantly challenging the world to
observe how prodigious an advantage he has gained over his rivals.”
69
The poet
and editor James Russell Lowell, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, agreed, arguing
that publishers had “done their best to persuade the public that numerosity is the
chief excellence in works of this kind.”
70

Critics especially complained that lexicographers expanded their total
word counts with obsolete words that no one actually used anymore.
Dictionaries, they felt, should reflect the language of the day, rather than
chronicle language past and present. As one reviewer writing in the New
Englander explained, “There are multitudes of words in even our best

noted that that work had five meanings to Webster’s two for the verb “abide.” New York Times,
July 13, 1890.
67
Sidney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 30, 84.
68
Chauncey Goodrich to George and Charles Merriam, June 2, 1857, G. & C. Merriam
Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
69
William Mathews, “The Use and Abuse of Words,” Lakeside Monthly, June 1, 1871, 445.
70
James Russell Lowell, Atlantic Monthly, May 1860, 634.

72
dictionaries, as useless and cumbersome as dead branches on a living tree.”
71
At
the same time, dictionaries were also critiqued for not including certain words.
As James Howard Mortimer, a dictionary agent in the late-nineteenth century
pointed out, “Dictionaries have been padded to such an extent, that some people
expect to find any word from any language in them, and consider them out of
date if they cannot find the word sought.”
72

Dictionaries, once faithful recorders of the language, were now seen as
vehicles of “progressive intelligence.”
73
The idea that dictionaries were for
readers seeking the latest information was particularly taken into account by
Isaac K. Funk, editor of the Standard Dictionary. Funk did something that was
considered quite radical at the time: he moved etymologies to the end of
definitions, and he put the newest definitions of words first. Traditionally,
compilers had put the oldest definitions of words first. Commenting on this
innovation, the New York Times noted, “Linguistic students will note this change
with regret; but the practical convenience of such an arrangement will commend
it to the greater number of those who use the dictionary mainly for current
definition.”
74
The Standard’s focus on newness also extended to the quotations
chosen to illustrate the meaning of words. Funk and his editors picked
quotations from modern authors and avoided quotations that had been used in
other dictionaries.

71
“Worcester’s Dictionary,” New Englander, May 1860, 412. For another, similar criticism
of Worcester, see “Battle of the Dictionaries,” John F. Marlay, Ladies’ Repository; A Monthly
Periodical, September 1860, 522.
72
James Howard Mortimer, Confessions of a Book Agent (Chicago: Cooperative Publishing,
1906), 122.
73
Dakota Republican, March 21, 1872.
74
New York Times, March 19, 1894.

73
In addition to adding new words, dictionary publishers added new
features including sections of familiar quotations, lists of prominent individuals,
geographical names, lists of post offices, abbreviations used in writing and
printing, words and phrases from foreign languages, and signs of the planets.
Thus the dictionary was not just a source for words and definitions, but for other
information as well. Some critics disagreed with such an arrangement, but others
took a more practical stance. The dictionary was no longer a book aimed at
scholars or philologists. It had a wider audience, and one that demanded ready
access to all sorts of information about all sorts of things. As one anonymous
writer explained, “If the addition of a concordance to the Bible, a volume of
sermons, and a receipt-books, would double the sale of the dictionary, we should
recommend the publishers to add them at once.”
75
Dictionaries became packed
with so many encyclopedic features, it was perhaps not surprising when, in 1883,
Cassel & Co. published the first two volumes of what they called the Encyclopedic
Dictionary.
76

Publishers of encyclopedias had perhaps an even more difficult time
producing books that were up to date. The sheer variety of topics covered made
encyclopedias difficult to revise quickly. After the German scholar Francis Lieber
finished publishing his Encyclopaedia Americana in 1833, he never revised it. By
the 1840s, Lieber’s publishers, Carey and Lea of Philadelphia, realized that they
had to find a way to update it. They took it upon themselves to arrange for
Henry Vethake, a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to compile a
supplementary volume in 1846. They did not ask Lieber if he wanted the

75
Old and New, July 1873, 108.
76
Literary World, March 21, 1885, 96.

74
opportunity to edit it.
77
Lieber was not pleased.
78
Clearly, his role as a leading
authority no longer mattered. As the supplement was just an additional volume,
and not a complete re-issuing of the Americana, it had some awkward features.
Articles that were not completely new, but just updates of what had already been
written about in the Americana, were marked with an asterisk. Thus, readers
would have to move back and forth between the original volumes and the
supplements.
79
Reviews of the supplement were generally positive, although
they noted that a single volume was not really enough to contain all of the new
knowledge that had come to pass in the past fifteen years.
80
The Southern and
Western Literary Messenger and Review noted that despite the editor’s best
attempts, the volume was already out of date, as it failed to mention the
discovery of gun cotton or the planet Neptune.
81

The American Cyclopaedia, published by D. Appleton & Co. and edited by
Charles A. Dana and George Ripley, also had to deal with the issue of being up
to date. The original plan was to publish the first volume in 1857 and then
continue to publish volumes every few months, so that the whole series would
be completed by 1863.
82
However, once the Civil War broke out, the publishers
realized that they could not ignore the events that were unfolding before the

77
Frank Freidel, Francis Lieber: Nineteenth Century Liberal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1947), 80.
78
Mary Gardner Lowell recorded Lieber’s anger in her travel diary in 1852, noting that
“He seemed quite disturbed by the piracies committed on his works & thought it an unwarranted
thing that an appendix should have been written by some person to the Encyclopaedia
Americana without his consent or desire. He intending to do it himself—he said an author could
not be protected against such injury.” Mary Gardner Lowell travel diary, July 9-25, 1851, Francis
Cabot Lowell Papers, MHS.
79
Henry Vethake, Encyclopaedia Americana: A Supplementary Volume (Philadelphia: Lea
and Blanchard, 1847). The volume was republished by Lea and Blanchard in 1850, and then by
Boston’s B.B. Mussey in 1851 and 1854, without additional revisions.
80
For this view point, see, for example, Literary World, February 6, 1847.
81
Southern and Western Literary Messenger and Review, January 1847, 60.
82
Grant Overton, Portrait of a Publisher: And the First Hundred Years of the House of
Appleton, 1825-1925 (New York: D. Appleton, 1925), 45.

75
country’s eyes, even if they did not yet know what the outcome would be. Thus,
they came up with the idea to publish Appleton’s Annual Cyclopedia, which
featured the most up-to-date history of the proceeding year. The Annual
Cyclopedia was an immediate success, and the first volume sold over 24,000
copies.
83
As the Massachusetts Teacher explained, “The great drawback to the
value of an encyclopedia has been that, once completed, it remains stationary
until the progress of knowledge has made a re-editing and a re-issue necessary;
and then you must throw away the old one and buy the new.” They also noted
that buying a single volume each year was much less expensive than have to
replace the entire series every seven years.
84
Scientific American concurred, calling
the Cyclopedia, “an absolute necessity to everyone who desires to keep pace with
the spirit of the age.”
85
The American Cyclopaedia itself, once all the volumes were
published, was also reviewed favorably in the press.
The expense of revising encyclopedias meant that sometimes, publishers
claimed to revise, while actually changing very little. The London Athenaeum
called stereotyping “the bane of cyclopedias” because it discouraged publishers
from correcting errors or making other changes.
86
How much stereotyping fixed
print in the nineteenth century is not fully known to scholars, although some
evidence suggests that the Athenaeum was correct.
87
While preparing the
stereotyping for the 1848 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, Charles and George
Merriam told William G. Webster that any corrections would “weaken the plates

83
Overton, 51.
84
Massachusetts Teacher and Journal of Home and School Education, November 1863, 396.
85
Scientific American, June 4, 1863.
86
Reprinted in New York Herald, May 4, 1858 (originally printed in London Athenaeum,
April 3, 1858).
87
Michael Winship has noted that “the extent to which plates served to freeze a text,
discouraging its correction or revision, is not clear.” See Winship, “Manufacturing and Book
Production,” in Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and Winship, 46.

76
and render it difficult to work them perfectly.” Thus, they urged Webster to
make only those corrections that seemed particularly necessary.
88
Perhaps that is
why, when D. Appleton & Co. came out with a new edition of the American
Cyclopedia in 1876, they made sure to point out in their advertisements that “none
of the original stereotypes have been used, but every page has been printed on
new type.”
89
By 1881, however, D. Appleton & Co. was looking for a cheaper
way to update their encyclopedia. Stoddart’s Review, which was produced by the
American publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, complained that the “new
and revised edition” of the American Cyclopaedia was made from the old
stereotype plates from the 1876 edition, with a few additions inserted at the end
of each volume. They noted that, “…A publisher who puts a new date upon an
old encyclopedia, and who permits the vast majority of the articles to remain as
they were when the work was first printed, would appear to be guilty of an
attempt to mislead his readers and the public.”
90

Controversy over a not-so-up-to-date reference book erupted again in
1889. In this year, the copyright of the 1847 Webster’s American Dictionary (edited
by Goodrich) expired, and a number of publishers rushed in to reprint the
dictionary, offering it at a much lower cost. The most notable of these publishers
was George W. Ogilvie from Chicago.
91
The book was advertised to the public
under a variety of names, including Webster’s Big Dictionary, Webster’s
Encyclopedic Dictionary, Webster’s Unabridged, and The Great Webster’s Dictionary. It
generally cost $5, compared to $10 for the new Merriam edition. As the

88
G. & C. Merriam to William G. Webster, Springfield, January 12, 1847, William G.
Webster Papers, New York Public Library.
89
Scientific American, November 25, 1876.
90
Stoddart's Review, May 1, 1881.
91
George W. Ogilvie & Co. was incorporated in 1885. See Tebbel, 2:289.

77
publishing date was listed as 1890, even though it was basically just a reprint
from 1847, it looked like an updated edition.
92
The Merriams were furious. They
unleashed a huge advertising campaign in newspapers across the country,
warning readers, “Don’t be duped.”
93
They explained that not only was this
dictionary out of date and out of step with the times, it was also poorly made.
Other advertisements referred to it as the “ancient edition” of Webster’s.
94
In
addition to their publicity campaign, the Merriams also took legal action.
Although the courts ultimately upheld Ogilvie’s right to use the title “Webster’s
Dictionary,” they did force him to put a disclaimer in the books, specifying that
said book was not published by the original publishers of Webster’s American
Dictionary.
95
It is not completely clear how the public responded to these
allegations of fraud. One publisher from Chicago wrote into the American
Bookseller to complain about the Merriam’s monopoly. He argued that having a
dictionary, even if it was from 1847, was better than having no dictionary at all.
He noted that the price of Webster’s was out of reach for many people, and the
reprint was good enough, “even though the binding and paper be not all a
bibliophile might desire.” He also claimed that the reprints of Webster’s had
been extremely popular with Americans, and that one firm had already made a
deal to print 1,500,000 copies in the next year.
96

The Importance of Objectivity

92
American Bookseller, April 15, 1890, 207.
93
Christian Union, May 22, 1890, 722.
94
Ladies Home Journal, July 1890, 14.
95
Micklethwait, 301-302.
96
American Bookseller, May 1, 1890, 239.

78
Another important way publishers attracted readers was by promising a
book that was unbiased and free from personal opinion. Much like with
newspapers, objectivity became an important selling point for reference books by
the late nineteenth century.
97
Professor David Swing, of Chicago, summed up the
feelings of many when he wrote in the 1878 that the encyclopedia was to be
valued, not just because of the amount of information it contained, but because
the information itself was “passionless,” “thorough,” and “just.” He continued,
“We all need…the impassioned men to arouse us, but we need the
encyclopedists to teach us the actual truth.”
98

The origins of this shift towards objectivity may have begun with the Civil
War. In October of 1863, as the Merriams were close to finishing their new
edition of Webster’s American Dictionary, George realized that the word “slavery”
might cause controversy among readers. The word and its definition were
accompanied by five illustrative quotations from abolitionist writers. George
supposedly wrote a letter to his editors, telling them to cut out most of the
abolitionist sentiment. “We do not hesitate at all proper times and places to
express our abhorrence of slavery,” he said, “but this…is not the proper place.”
99

Even after the war was over, however, slavery continued to be a hot button issue
for reference books. Perhaps the last shot in the dictionary wars took place in the
South in 1871, many years after both Webster and Worcester had passed away.
Since the 1850s, Southern education reformers had been decrying Southern
reliance on Northern school books. They argued that such books helped to

97
On the rise of objectivity in newspapers, see Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A
Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978).
98
David Swing, “Influence of Encyclopaedia Britannica on Style,”
Boston Daily Advertiser, October 22, 1878.
99
As quoted in Leavitt, 62.

79
spread abolitionist sentiment.
100
After the war, this hostility only intensified, as
Southerners worried about how histories, geographies, readers and dictionaries
were teaching children about the Civil War. Prominent Southerners called for
“Southern books for Southern children.”
101
Webster’s American Dictionary came
under particular attack, as Southern critics argued that the 1867 edition of
Webster’s, compiled by Dr. Noah Porter of Yale University, changed the
definitions of a number of political terms in order to support the North and
further anger embarrass the South. The Lynchburg Virginian noted that the
definitions of the words “congress,” “compact,” “Constitution,” “Legislature,”
and “State” had all been altered. The new definitions of these words avoided
using the terms “federal republic” or referring to “states.”
102
As a result of these
changes, the Virginian recommended that all public schools in the South use
Worcester instead of Webster. Although Worcester’s publisher, Thomas Mayo
Brewer, told his friend Henry Haynes that his firm, Brewster & Tileston, were
not responsible for starting the controversy, he did admit that they were making
trying to take advantage of the good press for Worcester, by circulating the
pamphlets as widely as possible.
103

The controversy continued on into 1872. The Macon Weekly Telegraph in
Georgia summarized the issue thusly, “all the world knows that in the editions
published since the war, the definitions of current political terms and words,
have been very largely and numerously modified and expurgated in this book, to

100
Keith Whitescarver, “School Books, Publishers, and Southern Nationalists:
Refashioning the Curriculum in North Carolina’s Schools, 1850-1861,” North Carolina Historical
Review 79 (2002): 28-49.
101
“Southern Books for Southern Children,” (Tennessee: s.n., 1872), Broadsides
Collection, American Antiquarian Society.
102
“Lexicography,” Lynchburg Virginian, November 16, 1871.
103
Thomas Mayo Brewer to Henry Haynes, March 13, 1872, Henry W. Haynes Papers,
MHS.

80
harmonize with the political doctrines of New England which have found an
apotheosis in the gory fields of Southern invasion and slaughter.”
104
Texas’s
Dallas Weekly Herald, copying an article on the controversy from the Atlanta Sun,
noted that the dictionary included the words “locofoco” and “copperhead” but
left out “carpet bagger.” They urged men and women to check with their
children’s schools to make sure that the latest edition of Webster was not in
use.
105
As a result, Worcester’s dictionaries were endorsed by the state education
boards of Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas. They were also
adopted in Atlanta, Norfolk, Richmond, Savannah, and other cities across the
south.
106
In the end, the storm extended beyond the South, with the New York
World publishing a critique along similar lines. The World went one step further,
however, accusing Dr. Porter of changing certain definitions in “a dishonest and
mercenary attempt to increase the sale of the work by making it a vehicle for
disseminating the transient party politics of the hour.”
107

The Merriams were not prepared to sit back and watch as the South
decided to embrace Worcester over Webster. They fired back with a circular
entitled, “Worcester as a ‘Radical’ Historian.” This circular included an extract
from Worcester’s Elements of History, Ancient and Modern from 1869. The passage
dealt with the Civil War and referred to Southerners as rebels and traitors.
Brewer & Tileston responded with their own pamphlet on April 10
th
, 1873,
explaining that, first, they were not, nor had ever been, the publishers of Elements
of History, and second, that Worcester did not write the passages listed as he died

104
“Worcester’s Dictionary,” Macon Weekly Telegraph, February 6, 1872.
105
“The Mongrel Edition of Webster’s Dictionary,” Dallas Weekly Herald, March 16, 1872.
106
Thomas Mayo Brewer to Henry Haynes, March 25, 1872, Henry W. Haynes Papers,
MHS.
107
“Webster’s Revised Dictionary as a Party Document,” New York World, February 23,
1872.

81
in 1865.
108
Both of these were true statements, but of course, Webster did not
write the updated definitions in his dictionary either. Interestingly enough, at
least one newspaper did not let this information stop it from recommending
Worcester. As the Macon Weekly Telegraph explained, “The language does not
belong to Dr. Worcester, but he had a perfect right to his own opinions.” They
went on to note, however, that they were looking forward to the publication of a
new British dictionary, which they hoped would be impartial.
109

Even once the dispute had subsided, Worcester’s publishers continued to
make reference to it when advertising their dictionary. In one such
advertisement, which includes reasons for buying Worcester’s Dictionary,
number fifteen was, “Because all the subjects included in its various departments
are treated with good and strict impartiality towards all men and all sects.”
110

Encyclopedias also came to embrace objectivity. The American Cyclopaedia, for
example, noted the “fairness” and “impartiality” of its contributors.
111

The “Americanizing” of Reference Books
A final way in which reference book publishers altered their content to
appeal to readers was by “Americanizing” British reference books. Of course,
adding American content to a British book was not a new strategy among
publishers. In the late eighteenth century, American publishers began reprinting

108
Brewer & Tileston, “An Untruthful Charge Refuted,” (Boston: Brewer & Tileston,
1873), Worcester Papers, MHS.
109
“The Dictionary Controversy,” Macon Weekly Telegraph, April 1, 1873.
110
J.B. Lippincott, “Reasons for Buying Worcester’s Quarto Dictionary,” (Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott, [1879?]), Worcester Papers, MHS.
111
George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, eds., The New American Cyclopaedia, vol. 1 (New
York: D. Appleton, 1858), vi.

82
British books, rather than simply importing them.
112
During the reprinting
process, it was not uncommon for publishers to add some American content, as
Philadelphia publisher Charles Dobson did with the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
113
In
order to help one another, these early American publishers also agreed not to
print competing editions. This informal arrangement was the genesis of what, by
the mid-nineteenth century, would come to be known as “courtesy of the
trade.”
114
The hope was that these American reprints would stop readers from
buying imports. By the 1830s, American readers were not only used to buying
American reprints, they were also hungry for books written by American
authors.
115
Publishers were all too happy to oblige. Despite this growing demand,
however, reprinting British books remained an attractive undertaking for
publishers because doing so was inexpensive and the books had already proven
to be steady sellers. Also, without an international copyright agreement (which
did not become law in the United States until 1891), reprinting British books was
completely legal.
The British encyclopedia reprinted the most in the United States during
the late nineteenth century was the famous Encyclopaedia Britannica. Hoping to
prevent cheap reprints, the Britannica’s Edinburgh publishers, Adam and Charles
Black, made agreements with the firm Little, Brown & Co. and later Charles
Scribner Sons to act as the American distributors of the work. Unfortunately for
the Blacks, while “courtesy of the trade” prevented other large American

112
James N. Green, “The Rise of Book Publishing,” in HOB 2, 83.
113
Ibid., 80, 86.
114
On the development of this practice, see Jeffrey D. Groves, “Courtesy of the Trade,” in
Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and Winship, 139-148.
115
James N. Green, “The Rise of Book Publishing,” in Gross and Kelley, 125.

83
publishers from reprinting the Britannica, it did not stop smaller houses from
trying to capture the American market for this famous British work.
Indeed, scholars have found that there were at least twelve unauthorized
American printings of the Britannica between 1875 and 1905.
116

The Blacks put out the first volume of the ninth edition of the Britannica in
1875.
117
That same year, two enterprising Philadelphia men, Joseph M. Stoddart
and Roger Sherman, decided to start publishing an American edition of the
encyclopedia. Stoddart had worked for J.B. Lippincott & Co. before forming his
own company.
118
Sherman was a printer who railed against international
copyright and liked to refer to himself as “the pirate king.”
119
Stoddart and
Sherman thought that they could easily outsell the original Britannica by printing
a version that was cheaper (only five dollars a volume, or about half the price)
and included more references to American people, places, and things. They
supposedly had a connection at the printing shop in Edinburgh, an American
named John Henderson Munro, who stole original proofs for the Britannica as
soon as they were printed and then sent them to Philadelphia. This arrangement
made it possible for Stoddart and Sherman to publish their volumes not long

116
Paul Kruse, “Piracy and the Britannica: Unauthorized Reprintings of the Ninth
Edition,” Library Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1963): 314.
117
The ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica consisted of twenty-four volumes, and
the final volume was not printed until 1888.
118
Stoddart (1845-1921) had a long career in publishing. He became managing editor of
Lippincott’s Magazine in 1886, and editor in 1889. While at Lippincott’s he published the work of
Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and others. In his history of American
magazines, Frank Luther Mott incorrectly lists a “Henry Stoddart” as editor. See Frank Luther
Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1865-1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970),
400. On Stoddart’s career, see Charles Morris, ed., Men of the Century (Philadelphia: L.R.
Hamersly & Co., 1896), 42; New York Times, February 27, 1921.
119
New York Tribune, February 14, 1886. Sherman died in 1886. See American Bookseller,
September 1, 1886, 130.

84
after the Blacks.
120
The book was sold by subscription and seems to have met
with immediate success. It was purchased by some of the best libraries in the
United States. Stoddart and Sherman were one of many new publishers that took
advantage of the economic depression of the 1870s to steal market share away
from the more established publishers (in this case, Little, Brown & Co).
121
By
1880, Stoddart (who was the public face of the American Britannica, although he
seems to have shared the copyright with Sherman) claimed his agents had
secured 15,000 subscribers.
122

The Blacks were not happy that Stoddart’s edition was eating into their
sales. They tried to fight back by selling an American version of the Britannica for
the same price as Stoddart. The “Hall edition” was printed in New York by
Samuel B. Hall for the Blacks and sold through Charles Scribner Sons. It was
printed on cheaper paper and many of the articles were abridged. Original
illustrations were reduced.
123
Charles Scribner Sons also launched a media attack
against Stoddart, warning readers that the American reprint was unreliable.
124

Perhaps because the Hall edition did not stop the sales of Stoddart, the Blacks
eventually tried a different approach. For volume IX of the Britannica, they
included articles written by Americans, and then copyrighted those articles in the
United States. Stoddart was not intimidated by this tactic, and went ahead and
reprinted it anyways. Fed up, Scribner (acting on behalf of the Blacks) sued
Stoddart for copyright infringement in 1879. The judge, however, sided with

120
“The Proof Sheet Story,” American Bookseller, April 15, 1878, 343; Herman Kogan, The
Great EB: The Story of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 64-
65.
121
Jeffrey D. Groves, “Courtesy of the Trade,” in Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and
Winship, 146-147.
122
“Personal,” Stoddart’s Review, March 13, 1880, 7.
123
“Facts!”, Stoddart’s Review, November 1, 1880, 177.
124
Kogan, 66.

85
Stoddart, noting that “a copyright cannot be taken out in the middle of a
work…”
125
Thanks to this ruling, Stoddart was able to go on printing the
Britannica.
Even though Stoddart now had the right to print the book exactly the
same as the original edition, in order to make the work more appealing to an
American market, he went to work “Americanizing” the Britannica. For volume
twelve he hired five proofreaders to look for errors in the work. He also engaged
a number of specialists to make sure all the articles were accurate. Finally, he had
all the maps re-engraved and corrected.
126
In addition, Stoddart compiled a very
valuable index to the first twelve volumes, which was larger, more detailed, and
easier to read than the corresponding British version.
127
In 1883, Stoddart
continued to improve the Britannica by publishing the first volume of a four-
volume supplement. Originally called Stoddart’s Encyclopaedia Americana, the
supplement focused on articles related to the United States.
128
The first volume of
Stoddart’s Encyclopaedia Americana was compiled with the assistance of over one
hundred contributors, most of whom were leading American intellectuals. Editor
and journalist Edwin Lawrence Godkin, for example, wrote an article on “Civil
Service Reform.”
129
The editor-in chief of the enterprise was Professor Robert

125
Scribner v. Stoddart, 21 Fed. Cases 876 (1879).
126
Stoddart’s Review, May 1, 1881, 282; “Publisher’s Department,” Stoddart’s Review, June
1, 1881, 298; “Volume Twelve of the American Reprint,” Stoddart’s Review, July 1, 1881, 301.
127
Kruse, 316. The index was a major selling point in advertisements for the Britannica.
See advertisement, for example, in Current, July 17, 1886, 1.
128
Kruse and other scholars refer to Stoddart’s Encyclopaedia Americana as an abridgement
of the Britannica. However the preface makes clear that the work was not designed to replace the
Britannica (or other general British encyclopedias), but to supplement it. Indeed, marginal
references specifically pointed the reader to related articles in the Britannica. See Kruse, 317; S.
Padraig Walsh, Anglo-American General Encyclopedias, A Historical Bibliography, 1703-1967 (New
York: R.R. Bowker, 1968), 52.
129
Edwin Lawrence Godkin, The Gilded Age Letters of E.L. Godkin, ed. William M.
Armstrong (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), 293.

86
Ellis Thompson of the University of Pennsylvania.
130
The two volumes were
called Supplement to Encyclopaedia Britannica and were published by the Hubbard
Brothers of Philadelphia and edited by Reverend Howard Crosby and John P.
Lamberton of Philadelphia. The last volume was called The Encyclopaedia
Americana and was published in 1889.
131
After the success of Stoddart, a number
of other American publishers issued their own editions of Britannica, and
continued to do so well into the twentieth century.
132

The Britannica was not the only British encyclopedia that was altered by
Americans. Iowa born John B. Alden came to New York in 1874 where he
established the American Book Exchange. The idea behind the exchange was that
men and women could bring in their old books and exchange them for one of
Alden’s used books, for a small fee of ten cents. He began his work as a publisher
in the late 1870s, selling cheap editions of famous authors like Shakespeare and
Dickens. In 1880, he published his first reference book, the Library of Universal
Knowledge.
133
On the one hand, it was largely a reprint of the popular British
Chamber’s Encyclopedia. But to this text was added a number of additions for an
American audience, including articles on American cities, towns, geographical
features, and individuals. Alden claimed in his “Publisher’s Notice” that the
editors inserted 15,000 new titles. As the names of the editors were not given, we
do not know for sure who was responsible for these changes.
134
The book was

130
Robert Ellis Thompson, ed., Stoddart’s Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 1 (New York: J.M.
Stoddart, 1883).
131
Howard Crosby, ed., The Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 4, (New York: J.M. Stoddart,
1889).
132
See Kruse, 314-315 for a list of these reprints.
133
Raymond Howard Shove, “Cheap Book Production in the United States, 1870-1891”
(M.L.S., University of Illinois, 1937), 87-90.
134
In their review of the encyclopedia, Literary World took issue with the fact that the
editors were not named. See Literary World, September 24, 1881, 326.

87
first sold for $15 for fifteen volumes and then lowered to only $10, making it one
of the cheapest general encyclopedias on the market. Perhaps it was too cheap,
because Alden and the American Book Exchange went bankrupt in 1882. S.W.
Green’s Sons eventually purchased the plates for the work. They renamed it the
American Universal Cyclopaedia and published it in 1882.
135
In 1884, the plates were
purchased by Dodd, Mead & Co. They in turn revised and expanded the work,
renaming it the International Cyclopaedia (1889). The book sold well, and Dodd,
Mead, & Co. arranged for substantial subsequent revisions. By the twentieth
century, the New International Cyclopaedia, which had started its life as a cheap
British reprint, was considered one of the best encyclopedias on the market.
136

A Matter of Size
The structure and organizing principles of reference books have evolved
over time. In fact, even the idea that a reference book should be organized
according to alphabetical arrangement did not gain popularity until the
eighteenth century.
137
But, by the mid-nineteenth century, in addition to adding
new content to reference books, publishers also began to think more about how
they could enhance the arrangement of these books. Even little changes, like the
use of different fonts for words and their definitions, began to be taken into
account by publishers.
138
The goal was to make them more suitable for a popular
audience who, rather than reading the book all the way through, needed to be

135
Christian Union, March 30, 1882, 305.
136
Walsh, 86.
137
Yeo, 25-27.
138
For a discussion of type choice for Webster’s American Dictionary, see Mason Brothers
to George and Charles Merriam, February 12, 1862, G. & C. Merriam Company Archive, Beinecke
Library, Yale University.

88
able to leaf through the pages and quickly find what they needed. American
publishers became attentive to organization as a way to add value and
distinctiveness to their books.
One obvious way in which publishers changed the design of these books
was through size. As previously mentioned, one of the first things the Merriams
did when they started publishing the American Dictionary was to reduce the size
from two volumes to one, while still managing to increase the number of words
by 10,000.
139
Other American reference books followed the same idea. The goal
was almost always the same: to squeeze “the largest number of facts into the
smallest possible compass.”
140
A smaller book also helped decrease the price. The
New American Cyclopaedia, for example, was praised by the Massachusetts Teacher
and Journal of Home and School Education for being “not too heavy for convenient
handling, nor too small to include really valuable detail.” They contrasted the
Cyclopedia’s sixteen volumes with the “cumbrous” Encyclopaedia Britannica, which
was just too big at twenty-one volumes.
141
Later encyclopedias got even smaller.
Johnson’s Cyclopaedia was originally conceived by the newspaper editor Horace
Greeley, who complained that he needed an encyclopedia that would fit on his
desk table. Greeley envisioned an encyclopedia that was only three volumes.
Johnson’s Cyclopaedia, once it was finished, came quite close to meeting this goal,
at four volumes. As the editors explained in their preface, “A condition
indispensable to the usefulness of a book of reference is...that it shall be always
near the inquirer’s hand.”
142

139
Leavitt, 50.
140
New York Evangelist, June 24, 1875.
141
Massachusetts Teacher and Journal of Home and School Education, November 1863, 396.
142
Barnard and Guyot, ix.

89
T. Edward Zell, an enterprising subscription book publisher from
Philadelphia, went even further with this idea of condensed books of reference.
He started publishing Zell’s Popular Encyclopedia in 1870.
143
His work immediately
made waves for being only two quarto volumes. The Eclectic Magazine noted that
because of the size, “only the merest skeleton of facts in the different
departments can be given, but this is what the vast majority of those who consult
encyclopedias either want or expect.”
144
A few years later, Zell decided that two
volumes simply was not small enough, and he resolved to published his Popular
Encyclopedia in only one volume, with over 1,000 double column pages. Zell
claimed it was the first general reference book in one volume that was ever
published.
145
Regarding the changing sizes of reference works, the Literary World
noted in 1877 that, “Upon the question whether a cyclopedia should consist of
four large quartos or sixteen octavos, there is room for precisely two opinions.
Either alternative is formidable enough to make the student often sigh for the
days when Lord Bacon attempted to survey the whole range of human
knowledge in a duodecimo.”
146

Illustrating the Word
Perhaps the most notable change to reference books between 1840 and
1880 was the inclusion of illustrations. In 1847, Blackie and Son began publishing
John Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary in London. In terms of the words and
definitions, the dictionary was nothing new. In fact, Ogilvie took the bulk of the

143
Leo de Colange, ed., Zell’s Popular Encyclopedia, vol. 1 and 2 (Philadelphia: T.E. Zell,
1870-1871).
144
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, June 1868, 759.
145
Albion, a Journal of News, Politics, and Literature, November 25, 1871, 746.
146
Literary World; a Monthly Review of Current Literature, September 1, 1877, 59.

90
text from the 1841 edition of Webster’s American Dictionary, only changing the
spellings and some definitions to fit British standards.
147
What made the
dictionary unique, however, were the two-thousand wood engravings that
illustrated the text. After seeing the Imperial, Chauncey A. Goodrich, one of the
editors of the 1847 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, immediately recognized that
the inclusion of illustrations in dictionaries could have a huge impact on the
dictionary market in America.
148
Strangely, however, he did not attempt to
convince the Merriams to embark on such an edition.
It was not until 1857—when the Merriams got word from one of their
agents, D. Tilton, that Worcester’s publisher, Swan, Brewer & Tileston, was
planning to incorporate illustrations in their next edition—that the Merriams
decided to include illustrations in their work as well.
149
They wanted to claim the
distinction of producing the first illustrated dictionary in the United States.
Feeling like they had to compete with Worcester, but also without the time to
create their own woodcuts, they decided they would simply copy the woodcuts
from Ogivlie’s Imperial Dictionary. The Merriams used the old stereotype plates
from Goodrich’s 1847 edition of Webster, and added a few new words as a
supplement. They did not even bother to reset the text but instead simply
included the illustrations in an eighty-page block in the front of the book. The
engravings were done by the Boston designer and engraver John Andrew.
150
G.

147
Michael Hancher, “Gazing at The Imperial Dictionary,” Book History 1, no. 1 (1998):
158.
148
Charles A. Goodrich to William Webster Ellsworth, February 2, 1848, Yale University
Archives, Sterling Memorial Library. Quoted in Michael Hancher, “Illustrating Webster,”
Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 31 (2010): 8.
149
D. Tilton to George and Charles Merriam, August 12, 1857, G. & C. Merriam Company
Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
150
For more on Andrew, see David Tatham, Winslow Homer and the Pictorial Press
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003).

91
and C. Merriam Co. published the American Dictionary of the English Language,
Pictorial Edition in 1859. In the preface, they told readers that the placement of the
illustrations together was actually done on purpose, so that readers could see all
the illustrations for a particular subject together at once. Their plan worked.
Readers loved the placement of the illustrations, and they did not care that the
Pictorial Edition was not really a new work.
151
The National Era gushed, “We
consider the pictures alone well worth the price of the volume.”
152
But some
scholars did take notice. Frederick A. Packard, the editorial secretary of the
American Sunday School Union in Philadelphia, compared the Merriams to
snake oil salesmen. He could not believe that they would try to pass off their
Pictorial Edition as something new—when in reality its publication was little
more than a marketing ploy.
153

By the time Worcester’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published
in 1860, his over 1,000 wood engravings did not seem like much of an
innovation. In fact, some critics did not like the illustrations at all. Of course, the
inclusion of illustrations in educational texts had long been a source of debate
among scholars. Many saw them as childish and unlearned. Worcester’s friends
and fellow lexicographers were divided. Samuel Austin Allibone, the author of A
Critical Dictionary of English Literature, complemented Worcester’s illustrations,
noting that they “often explain at the glance what no language could possibly
make clear to the inquirer.”
154
Francis Lieber, editor of the Encyclopedia Americana,
was not as kind: “May I say, in the spirit of friendship, that I regret your

151
In fact, the separation of the illustrations proved so popular, that Merriams continued
to do it in every subsequent Pictorial Edition, until 1934. Micklethwait, 297.
152
National Era, February 16, 1860, 26.
153
Frederick A. Packard to Worcester, September 10, 1860, Worcester Papers, MHS.
154
Samuel Austin Allibone to Worcester, May 6, 1859, Worcester Papers, MHS.

92
publishers induced you to add the wood cuts?”
155
Still, despite the dissenters,
after Webster and Worcester, illustrations became a standard feature in most
general American reference books.
Worcester and Webster’s publishers also put thought into making a
reference book that was simply easier to read and to use. Worcester’s publishers
at the time, Swan, Brewer, & Tileston, decided to work with H. O. Houghton and
Company in Cambridge to help them design the work. Houghton had
established his printing company, called the Riverside Press, in 1852, and he
quickly gained a reputation as a perfectionist who produced high-quality
publications.
156
Working with Worcester and his publishers, Houghton created a
dictionary that was arranged in three columns (instead of the standard two) and
featured larger type and wider margins, making it much easier to read. When the
dictionary was published in 1860, it was immediately lauded for its design.
James Russell Lowell, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, commended the
dictionary for “the size of the type, and the greater clearness of the page.”
157

Thomas Carlyle noted that everything in the dictionary was “calculated for
carrying information by the directest road.”
158
One Brice S. Hunter, a teacher
from Ohio, wrote to Worcester to tell him that the new design, which included
writing out the word at the top of the page, had made it easier for his students to
use the dictionary: “I have tried several children with the different editions, & in

155
Francis Lieber to Worcester, January 30, 1860, Worcester Papers, MHS.
156
Charles A Rheault, Jr., In Retrospect: The Riverside Press, 1852-1971 (Boston: Society of
Printers, 1979), 4. For more information on Houghton, see Horace Elisha Scudder, Henry Oscar
Houghton: A Biographical Outline (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1897); Ellen B. Ballou, The Building
of the House: Houghton Mifflin’s Formative Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970).
157
Atlantic Monthly, May 1860, 637.
158
William Newell, “Memoir of J.E. Worcester, LL.D.,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts
Historical Society 18 (1880), 173.

93
finding words, in every instance, they greatly preferred the revised edition.”
159

Another reader wrote to Worcester’s publishers congratulating them on the
design. He explained, “Here is an invaluable improvement upon the style of
printing books for reference, which has hitherto prevailed, at least in America;
and your admirable example will no doubt be the beginning of a general reform
in this particular.”
160

Almost as soon as they had published their 1859 illustrated edition, the
Merriams began work on a revised edition. This time, they employed Yale
professor Noah Porter to carry out the necessary changes. But the Merriams
recognized that in addition to updating the content, they could not let Worcester
have the upper hand when it came to producing a book that was more of a
“ready reference.” So, they went to H.O. Houghton, Worcester’s printer, and on
December 14, 1863, signed an agreement to engage Houghton in printing and
binding the next Webster’s.
161
Houghton worked with the Merriams to create a
dictionary that was easier to read. In particular, Houghton made sure that the
margins of the book were large enough so that the pages did not seem to
crowded with text.
162
When it was finally published in 1864, reviewers took
notice of its better design. The dictionary became an unqualified success. By
1867, the Riverside Press was manufacturing one hundred tons of Webster’s
Unabridged each year.
163

159
Brice S. Hunter to Worcester, November 13, 1860, Worcester Papers, MHS.
160
James Jemmison to Hickling, Swan & Brewer, February 17, 1860, Worcester Papers,
MHS.
161
Ballou, 43.
162
H.O. Houghton to George and Charles Merriam, February 15, 1864, Madeline Kripke
Collection.
163
Ballou, 97.

94
Arranged for Ready Reference
In the late 1880s, the publishers of one reference work, Nutell’s Standard
Dictionary, began to advertise their book with the specific tagline, “For Rapid
Reference.”
164
By that point, reference publishers had realized that the job of
these books was not just to provide information, but to help readers find that
information, as quickly and easily as possible. Interestingly, a similar shift
occurred within American libraries. During the last three decades of the
nineteenth century, as John Y. Cole has argued, libraries went from
“storehouses” to “workshops,” wherein the reader, instead of the collections,
came first.
165

So how did publishers enhance the searchability of their books? One main
way was through the addition of indexes. While indexing has a long history,
good indexes were not common features of reference books, especially
encyclopedias.
166
The absence of indexes was in large part because of the time
and expense they took to create.
167
However, as Americans looked for books that
would provide them with easy and quick access to information, more people
began to appreciate the value of an index, and they pressured publishers to
include them. The Boston politician Charles Hale, writing in the Christian Union,
argued that “there are many books of which the value for practical purposes is

164
Dial, September 1888, 94. There were, of course, some exceptions to this rule, especially
when it came to works like the Encyclopedia Britannica.
165
John Y. Cole, “Storehouses and Workshops: American Libraries and the Uses of
Knowledge,” in The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860-1920, ed. Alexandra
Oleson and John Voss (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 364-385.
166
Robert Collison, Encyclopaedias: Their History Throughout the Ages (New York: Hafner
Publishing, 1964), 15.
167
Henry Benjamin Wheatley, What is an Index?: A Few Notes on Indexes and Indexers
(London: Index Society, 1879), 28. For the early history of indexing, see Ann M. Blair, Too Much to
Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2010), 53, 137-144,

95
almost wholly lost for lack of an index.”
168
The Christian Advocate summed up the
feelings of many when they wrote in 1852:
Can it be supposed that so fast a generation will stop to explore, with
spectacles on nose, the finely printed pages of every new octavo? Authors
cannot afford the times to make indexes, and publishers cannot afford to
keep their presses waiting for them, which the matter is all in type—nor
can we afford to buy them without this essential part. There may be some
literary anacondas left, who are capable of swallowing an encyclopedia
whole, and digesting it at leisure. But the inordinate supply of books, and
the pressure of the times, drive most of us to read by subject.
169

Perhaps the most outspoken advocate for indexing books in the United States
was Samuel Austin Allibone, author of the Critical Dictionary of English Literature
and British and American Authors.

The first volume of this celebrated book of
reference was published by Childs & Peterson in 1858, but the second and third
volume were published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. in 1870 and 1871.
170
Allibone’s
book was arranged alphabetically, but also included forty subject indexes.
Allibone’s project was a huge undertaking, which he completed by himself,
without the help of any assistants. He thus dedicated his volumes to his patient
and supportive publishers George William Childs and Joshua B. Lippincott.
171

Allibone was passionate about the issue of indexing, and wrote an editorial in
the New York Tribune on books without indexes that caused quite a storm and
was republished in newspapers and magazines across the United States. He
particularly laid blame on publishers:

168
Christian Union, March 8, 1876.
169
Christian Advocate and Journal, Oct 21, 1852, 172. For a similar opinion, see Historical
Magazine, March 1866, 71.
170
Allibone’s Dictionary was one of several reference books published by J. B. Lippincott
& Co. They also published Lippincott’s Pronouncing Gazetteer of the World, Webster’s Dictionary,
Worcester’s Dictionary, and the American edition of Chambers’s Encyclopedia, among others. See
John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1975), 2:284-
285.
171
George William Childs, Recollections (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1890), 13-14.

96
I have known of instances where indexes were objected to by publishers,
because they were too minute—took up too much room. A carefully
prepared index to a set of one of the most important of late American
publications, was reduced perhaps one half, to diminish the expense of
paper and print!

He went on to suggest that in order to receive the copyright for a work, the
author should be required to include an index.
172

Responding perhaps to Allibone’s call, D. Appleton & Co. attempted an
index to their Annual Cyclopaedia in 1877. The end product was basically an index
of the title of articles, and no author took responsibility for compiling it. The
Library Journal gave it a scathing review.
173
D. Appleton & Co. realized their error,
and when they decided to publish an index to the larger American Cyclopaedia,
they enlisted Reverend T.J. Conant, a Professor of Hebrew, and his daughter,
Blandina Conant.
174
Because it formed a separate volume, the Appletons made
sure that the index had a number of additional features. They added the
pronunciation of words in titles. They corrected errors from the earlier volumes.
They added additional information on a number of subjects. All of these
additions meant that it was much more like a supplement to the American
Cyclopaedia than just an index. Still, the response to the work was positive. The
Library Journal, which just a few months before had railed against the Index to
Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, praised the Conants’ index.
175

In additional to textual indexes, physical indexes for books also began to
become popular during the late nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1870s,
American inventors began patenting different book-index designs. These indexes

172
Samuel Austin Allibone, “Books Without Indexes,” New York Tribune, October 27,
1860.
173
Library Journal, no. 2 (New York: F. Leypoldt, 1878), 296.
174
Blandina Conant was a writer for Christian Union. She received an honorary A.M. from
Rutgers in 1877. See New York Evangelist, June 28, 1877.
175
Library Journal, no. 3 (New York: F. Leypoldt, 1878), 303.

97
were specifically designed to make dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories, and
other reference works easier to use.
176
In 1884, Alford A. Butler, of Bay City,
Michigan, received a patent for his method of indexing books. Butler’s indexes
were essentially notches, cut into the edges of reference books. A sticker with a
letter on it was then placed onto the exposed pages, allowing readers to flip to
specific parts of a reference book with ease.
177
Butler sold his patent to the New
York lawyer Charles H. Denison, who turned the invention into a commercial
success by partnering with the best-known reference-book publishers. Denison
made a deal with George and Charles Merriam, which allowed readers to
purchase Webster’s Dictionary with the Reference Index at a small additional
cost.
178
Denison gave the Merriams all of his plates, materials, and tools and the
Merriams had the system put onto their books at their own expense. In the
beginning, Denison received a royalty of twenty-five cents for every copy of
Webster’s Unabridged sold with his index. The Merriams also agreed to share the
costs with Denison in advertising the Index.
179
Denison’s indexing system was
also used on other dictionaries, including the Funk & Wagnalls’ Standard
Dictionary.
180
It received warm reviews in the press. As Popular Science Monthly
explained, Denison’s Index “saves time and avoids perplexity at exactly the right
moment when a reference is to be made.” Henry Ward Beecher also endorsed the

176
The earliest invention related to indexing books in the United States was patented by
New Yorker J.S. Hicks on September 23, 1873. Hicks had created tags with letters on them which
stuck out from the leaves of a book. Whether this invention actually deserved to be patented is
another story. See J.S. Hicks, “Indexing Books,” United States Patent no. 143,075, September 23,
1873.
177
Alford A. Butler, “Indexing Books,” United States Patent no. 306,318, October 7, 1884.
178
Dial, April 1884, 328.
179
Agreement between Charles H. Denison and George and Charles Merriam, April 26,
1883; Merriam Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
180
Denison’s indexing system is prominently featured in a Standard Dictionary canvassing
book from 1893. See canvassing book for Isaac K. Funk, ed., Standard Dictionary of the English
Language (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1893), Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania
Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

98
system by saying, “No one who has once used it would willingly be without
it.”
181
Interest in textual and physical indexes for books expanded during the
second half of the nineteenth century. By 1881, the Literary World declared that
“the golden age of indexing” was fast approaching.
182

In his 1895 review of the Standard Dictionary, writer Thomas J. Mcormack
noted approvingly that, “In a broad sense the Dictionary is essentially a people’s
book, and arranged almost entirely with practical ends in view.”
183
The notion of
a reference book as a “people’s book” was a new development in the nineteenth
century. In order to increase their profits, publishers worked hard to produce
dictionaries and encyclopedias that would appeal to a mass market. They did
this by continually altering content and format. But to ensure a mass distribution,
publishers organized an army of book agents, who canvassed the nation
peddling their supply of useful information. The story of publishers, their book
agents, and their customers, is the subject of the next chapter.

181
American Stationer, August 9, 1888, 279.
182
Literary World, March 26, 1881, 119.
183
Thomas J. Mcormack, “The Standard Dictionary,” Open Court, A Quarterly Magazine,
July 25, 1895.

99

Chapter Three
A Peripatetic Enterprise

Reflecting on his success selling books through canvassers, New York
encyclopedia and atlas publisher Alvin J. Johnson explained in 1868, “Good
books are no objection when coupled with snap and gumption.”
1
Johnson, like
most reference book publishers during the second half of the nineteenth century,
knew that no matter how useful his books might be, they were not going to sell
themselves. To drum up demand, Johnson relied on the “snap and gumption” of
an army of agents who traversed the country, convincing people to buy.
Throughout the nineteenth century, there were three main ways of distributing
books: by mail, bookshop, or agent. Selling books by mail was convenient, but
passive.
2
Retail shops moved books, but stores were mostly located in urban
areas.
3
Between 1840 and 1880, as reference book publishers sought to push their
products to new markets, they expanded their use of book agents. Book agents
brought dictionaries and encyclopedias directly into the schools and homes of a
rapidly expanding and widely dispersed population. They sold millions of books
at a range of prices, and in so doing, played an important role in popularizing
reference books beyond the urban elite.

1
Alvin J. Johnson to Lewis W. Fairchild, January 28, 1868, Lewis W. Fairchild Papers,
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.
2
It was not until the late nineteenth century that selling books by mail became a big
business, in large part because publishers started actively pursuing mail-orders through circulars.
See Sheehan, 195-198.
3
On the bookshop in the nineteenth century, see Winship, “Distribution and the Trade”
in Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and Winship, 117-130. Winship contends that the bookshop was
“the most important site” for distributing books in the nineteenth century. However, it is clear
that the bookstore did not play a central role when it came to selling reference books. As this
chapter will discuss, publishers primarily sold dictionaries and encyclopedias through agents.

100
After a brief discussion of the history of book peddling in the United
States, this chapter shows how, beginning in 1840s, reference book publishers
came to rely on book agents to persuade school officials to incorporate their
dictionaries and encyclopedias into school curriculums and school libraries. The
success reference book publishers had with school agents encouraged them to
increase their employment of agents selling books door-to-door. The widespread
use of agents to bring reference books to the people began in earnest after the
Civil War, and by 1880, the United States was saturated with agents from both
established reference book publishers, such as D. Appleton & Co., as well as
small, upstart publishers, like J.M. Stoddart and Co., who hoped to profit from
this alternate distribution method.

A Brief History of Book Peddling
Peddling has a long history in the United States. Many famous Americans
were known to have tried their hand at book peddling, from George Washington
to Daniel Webster to P.T. Barnum.
4
Mason Weems, author of the Life of
Washington, was perhaps the most famous American peddler.
5
As early as the
eighteenth century, peddlers (also called canvassers, hawkers, colporteurs or
drummers) were traveling throughout the country selling a variety of objects
including books, combs, buttons, knives, cookware, musical instruments, and
pottery.
6
The diversity of goods being sold door-to-door continued in the

4
F.E. Compton, Subscription Books (New York: New York Public Library, 1939).
5
On Weems’ career as a peddler, see James Gilreath, “Mason Weems, Mathew Carey,
and the Southern Booktrade, 1794-1820,” Publishing History 10 (1981): 27-49.
6
J.R. Dolan, The Yankee Peddlers of Early America: An Affectionate History of Life and
Commerce in the Developing Colonies and the Young Republic (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1964);
Richardson Wright, Hawkers and Walkers in Early America (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1927);
Peter Benes, ed., Itinerancy in New England and New York (Boston: Boston University, 1986).

101
nineteenth century. In addition to books, peddlers sold atlases, lightening rods,
patent medicines, and seeds.
7
Reference books in particular have a long history of
being sold by agents in the United States. Noah Webster’s American Dictionary
and Francis Lieber’s Encyclopaedia Americana were both sold by subscription, in
addition to being sold in bookstores. By the mid-nineteenth century, however,
peddling shifted from being relatively ad hoc to being a highly organized, and
profitable method of selling.
8
Publishers, religious societies, and wholesale
houses all developed ways to systematize their distribution using agents.
9

Americans from many different backgrounds thought they would try
their hand at being a book agent during the nineteenth century. Clergymen,
students, soldiers, women, and farmers all found an opportunity to canvass. As
long as you could sell, it seems, you could be an agent.
10
Although peddlers had
been traversing the country since the mid-eighteenth century, it was not until
after the Civil War that the number of book agents started to rise at a dramatic
pace. Some scholars have argued that the Civil War caused Americans to turn to
selling door-to-door. Veterans might have been drawn to the profession because
they were out of work and lacked other skills.
11
Widows too, might have been
interested because publishers offered to train new recruits.
12
In the decades after
the War, one publisher claimed that they seemed to get a rush of new canvassers

7
Walter F. Friedman, Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 34-35.
8
Although Mason Weems, for example, was a skilled book salesman, his expenses were
so high that he did not make any money for himself or his publisher. See James N. Green, “The
Rise of Book Publishing,” in Gross and Kelley, 86-88.
9
Traveling salesmen, or drummers, worked for wholesale houses selling manufactured
goods like whiskey, groceries, and jewelry to merchants. They generally considered themselves
to be of a higher caliber than most canvassers. See Friedman, 56-87.
10
William Hart, The Travelling Book-Agent’s Guide and Instructor (Boston: 1865), 13.
11
F.E. Compton, Subscription Books (New York: New York Public Library, 1939), 34.
12
Harry Clark, “The Huckster in the Parlor,” Journal of Library History, Philosophy, and
Comparative Librarianship 8, no. 3 (July 1, 1973): 159.

102
after a business panic. These men might only work as agents until they earned
enough capital to start a new business.
13

Of course, publishers liked to claim that they hired only the best and
brightest. Joseph M. Stoddart, the Philadelphia publisher of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, explained of his agents: “These canvassers are gentlemen of
education, social position, and refinement.”
14
While this statement cannot be
taken at face value, some agents do seem to have come from educated
backgrounds. Iowa born Albert Tallman Free, for example, went to the
University of Iowa. He sold books on the side, and in 1886, became an agent for
Johnson’s Universal Cyclopaedia. Free eventually became a college professor and
president of Yankton College.
15
Virginia-born Robert E. Terry had studied at a
theological institute and spent decades as an Episcopalian clergyman when he
decided to start selling the Encyclopaedia Britannica for Charles Scribner & Sons in
the 1880s.
16

In general though, because publishers were always looking for new
agents, they could not afford to be too picky. They advertised constantly in all
the main newspapers and magazines of the day.
17
They tried to pique people’s
interest with the promise of easy money: “One agent, a young man, has sold
6,000 sets of Dickens’ works in two years. As subscription books sell at higher
price than their fellows that are to be bought in the shop…the sources of profit is

13
“Successful Book Agents,” Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of
Agriculture, June 30, 1883, 4.
14
Stoddart’s Review, March 20, 1880.
15
Lindell, 224.
16
New York Times, August 4, 1891.
17
Michael Hackenberg, “The Subscription Publishing Network in Nineteenth-Century
America,” in Getting the Books Out: Papers of the Chicago Conference on the Book in 19
th
-Century
America, ed. Michael Hackenberg (Washington: Library of Congress, 1987), 50-51.

103
evident.”
18
D. Appleton & Co. published a typical advertisement in 1876 with the
enticing headline, “Are you out of employment? Send for our Illustrated Catalog
of Subscription Books, many of which find a ready sale even in these times.”
19
Of
course, they did not always do the hiring themselves. Many large subscription
publishing houses had firms in other cities that acted as general agents (hiring
agents and managing orders).
Part of the reason publishers advertised so extensively was that people
frequently tried their hand at selling books and ultimately failed. In 1883, George
Washington Davis, the head of the canvassing department for D. Appleton &
Co., estimated that he hired 3,000 new canvassers a year, and out of that amount,
only about 10 turned out to be good agents.
20
The constant rebuffs from
customers were one reason being a book agent was no easy job. Another was that
the position did not garner much respect, especially as the number of book
agents increased and Americans felt inundated with requests to buy. Book
agents, with their high-pressure sales techniques, were often seen as nuisances.
Facing such adversity, it is not surprising that many agents sold books for only a
short time before moving on. Others thought they might have a better chance of
success if they sold multiple books.
21
Publishers did not endorse this practice, but
were fairly powerless to stop it. One agent in Pennsylvania in the 1870s, for
example, sold Webster’s Dictionary alongside eighteen other titles.
22

18
Current Literature, September 1888, 280.
19
Harper’s Weekly, August 19, 1876, 683.
20
“Successful Book Agents,” Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of
Agriculture, June 30, 1883, 4.
21
Agents Companion: A Manual of Confidential Instructions (Philadelphia: Jones Brothers,
[1866-1869?]), 9.
22
Michael Hackenberg, “Hawking Subscription Books in 1870: A Saleman’s Prospectus
from Western Pennsylvania,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 78, no. 2 (1984):
149-150.

104
Book agents followed a fairly rigid program set up by publishers
regarding sales. They were told exactly where to go, and taught how to make a
sale. For the most part, they worked on commission, and were responsible for all
of their own travel expenses. They sold many different genres, including
histories, biographies, atlases, Bibles, and fiction. Books about the Civil War, and
fiction written by Mark Twain, sold particularly well. Reference books, especially
multi-volume works, were also commonly sold by subscription. In fact, one
author in 1888, argued that the encyclopedia had “given employment to more
agents than any other work.” The second most popular work to sell by
subscription, he claimed, was the unabridged dictionary.
23

Although technically operating outside of the commercial book trade,
beginning in the 1840s, religious colportage became particularly widespread, as
organizations like the American Tract Society came to rely on agents to sell
religious books and tracts by the million. These organizations also exercised a
significant amount of administrative control over agents. Unlike commercial
book agents, agents for religious publishing societies were salaried and all of
their expenses were covered. They tended to sell classic religious works like John
Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress and Richard Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted. But
perhaps the biggest difference between religious colportage and the commercial
trade was that agents were allowed to give away books for free to needy
families.
24

Canvassing such a huge area as the United States was a difficult task. But
several conditions came together in the nineteenth century to make it not only

23
“Books Sold By Agents,” Christian Advocate, April 19, 1888, 269.
24
David Paul Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 89-111.

105
possible, but also financially worthwhile. First, transportation improved,
allowing agents to traverse the countryside quickly and fairly cheaply.
25
The
completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the use of the steamer helped bring
books to the West.
26
Beginning in the 1830s, the United States also began building
an extensive rail network. Transportation was important, because even by the
mid-nineteenth century, most Americans still lived in rural areas.
27
These areas
were, for the most part, not able to sustain bookstores or libraries. Thus, small
towns were a largely untapped market that publishers were, by the 1860s, finally
able to exploit. Second, express companies started forming, and using a variety
of different travel options, were able to deliver packages quicker that the postal
service. These developments made it easier for publishers and agents to
transport loads of books to even the most remote location.
28
The development of
express companies during this period also meant that books could be shipped to
agents quicker than ever before. But improved transportation and methods of
conveyance were not the only reasons that selling books through agents became
widespread. Beginning in the late 1830s, two other important developments
helped to encourage the proliferation of book agents, and reference book agents
in particular: the movement towards uniformity in schoolbooks and the growth
of the school-district library. Since school officials had ultimate control over the

25
On the role improved transportation played in the United States more generally during
the nineteenth century, see Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of
America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
26
Madeline Stern, “Dissemination of Popular Books in the Midwest and Far West during
the Nineteenth Century,” in Getting the Books Out, ed. Michael Hackenberg (Washington: Library
of Congress, 1987), 80-81.
27
Michael Winship, “Distribution and the Trade,” in Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and
Winship, 120.
28
Hackenberg, “The Subscription Publishing Network in Nineteenth-Century America,”
48-49.

106
selection of books, and as each school could only buy so many books, publishers
relied on agents to travel to these districts and make their case face to face.

Reference Books in the Schoolroom
Historians disagree on how widespread schooling was during the early
nineteenth century. By 1840, however, we know that 38% of white children ages
five to nineteen attended school. And by 1860, national school attendance had
jumped to 59%. School attendance was highest in New England, followed by the
Middle Atlantic, the Midwest, and finally the South.
29
Reference book publishers
took notice of the expansion of schooling, as well as a growing interest among
school officials in making sure all students were using the same books.
30
In the
1840s, reference book publishers began using book agents to help them push
their books into American schools. Dictionary publishers sold both their larger,
general works to schools as well as smaller works designed especially for
students. In the 1850s, for example, Webster’s series of dictionaries for younger
students included the Primary School Dictionary for common schools, which was
320 pages and 45 cents, the High School Dictionary, which was 360 pages and 80
cents, and the Academic Dictionary for higher schools and academies, which was
432 pages and $1.25.
31
School dictionaries were designed specifically for young
students; they were smaller and contained far fewer words than the general
editions, but they were also cheap enough so that most families could afford to
buy them. Encyclopedia publishers did not have a similar abridged encyclopedia

29
Gerald F. Moran and Maris A. Vinovskis, “Schools,” in Gross and Kelley, 290-292.
30
Moran and Vinovskis, 299.
31
George and Charles Merriam, “The Dictionary in the School-Room,” (Springfield: G. &
C. Merriam, 1854), n.p.

107
that they could sell to students, so they concentrated on getting their
multivolume books into the growing number of school-district libraries.
Although informal school libraries had long existed in some common
schools, especially in urban areas, it was not until the mid-1830s that officials
began advocating for tax-supported district libraries for schools.
32
In 1835, New
York became the first state to establish a law respecting school libraries. During
the subsequent fifteen years the law was responsible for the purchase of over
1,600,000 books for libraries across the state.
33
Although these libraries were
primarily aimed at the students, they were considered community resources and
adults were allowed to use them as well. Massachusetts soon followed, thanks in
large part to the reformer and educator Horace Mann. During his 1839 Annual
Report on Education in Massachusetts, Mann noted that after surveying towns
across the state, he had found that more than one third of them had no town,
social, or school library. Mann explained, “It had long been a common remark
that many persons read too much; but here we have proof how many thousands
read too little. For the poor man and the laboring man the art of printing seems
hardly yet to have been discovered.”
34
He also noted that families in
Massachusetts did not often have access to quality books at home, such as an
encyclopedia: “Rarely will any book be found partaking of the character of an
encyclopaedia, by a reference to which, thousands of interesting questions, as
they daily arise, might be solved, and great accessions to the stock of valuable

32
Public Libraries in the United States of America (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1876), 38-57.
33
Public Libraries in the United States of America, 39-41.
34
Horace Mann, Life and Works of Horace Mann, ed. George Comb Mann (Boston: Lea and
Shepard, 1891), 3:14.

108
knowledge be imperceptibly made.”
35
Mann’s remarks were met with much
agreement, and the movement to establish these libraries quickly gained traction.
Not long after New York and Massachusetts, other states, including Michigan,
Connecticut, Ohio, Rhode Island, Iowa, Indiana, and Maine, pursued similar
legislation.
36

The first books that filled these school libraries were encyclopedic in
nature. Created under the direction of Boston’s American Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1838, the American School Library was a set of
books published by Harper Brothers. Harper Brothers also published their own
version under the name of the School District Library. This series included books
on history, biography, philosophy, and science.
37
The appeal of these books, as
the Boston Reverend William P. Page explained, was that they taught children
“to be their own educators.”
38
As we shall see, educators came to value
dictionaries and general encyclopedias because they did the same thing. The
School District Library collection paved the way for the encyclopedias and
dictionaries that followed.
Publishers quickly realized that they could not simply wait and see if a
school would choose to recommend their book to its students or add their book
to its library. They had to actively work to convince schools that their book was
the best. The fight between Webster, Worcester, and their publishers to get their
dictionaries into the schools in Ohio offers one example of just how much

35
Mann, 12.
36
Sidney Ditzion, “The District-School Library, 1835-55,” Library Quarterly 10, no. 4
(October, 1940): 545-577.
37
Scott E. Casper, “Case Study: Harper & Brothers,” in Gross and Kelley, 132-135.
38
“School District Libraries,” circular letter from William P. Page to R.S. Field, February
8, 1841, Broadsides Collection, AAS.

109
publishers came to depend on agents to move their books.
39
The Ohio legislature
had passed a law establishing common schools in 1825. By 1836, the general
assembly had voted to provide money for the building of school libraries.
40

Although the Midwest was behind other regions in the United States when it
came to school attendance, it quickly caught up. By 1860, 70% of white children
ages five to nineteen were in school, which was the second highest rate in the
nation.
41

The Midwest was a crucial market, as Webster well understood.
42
He had
partnered with booksellers in Cincinnati to sell his speller as early as 1821.
43
In
addition, Webster’s son, William G. Webster, had moved to Cincinnati in 1835 to
become a partner in the firm Corey, Fairbank & Webster, which sold the speller
and some of Webster’s other schoolbooks (but not any of Webster’s dictionaries,
which continued to be published in the East). Although William G. Webster
should have been a strong advocate for pushing Webster into schools, he was a
terrible businessman. He and his firm sold too many books on credit, to people
who never intended to pay them back. He left the West in 1839 and returned
home to New Haven.
44

39
For additional information on the dictionary battle in Ohio and other Western states,
see Allen Walker Read, “The War of the Dictionaries in the Middle West,” in Papers on
Lexicography, ed. J.E. Congleton, J. Edward Gates, and Donald Hobar (Terre Haute: Indiana State
University, 1979), 3-15.
40
Public Libraries in the United States of America, 50.
41
Moran and Vinovskis, 292.
42
Webster wrote to his son William in 1836 that, “I know the importance of the West to
me & my agents & probably to my heirs. Whatever I can do shall be done.” As quoted in
Micklethwait, 241.
43
Walter Sutton, The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth-Century Publishing and
Book-Trade Center (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1961), 167. This kind of partnership
became common practice among Eastern publishers during this period. See James N. Green, “The
Rise of Book Publishing,” in Gross and Kelley, 121.
44
On William G. Webster’s time in Cincinnati, see Micklethwait, 234-245.

110
Worcester was also interested in the Ohio market. In 1834, Worcester’s A
Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language was
published in a stereotype edition by Nathan Guilford in Cincinnati. Born in
Massachusetts in 1786, Guilford moved to Cincinnati first to practice law. He
opened up a bookselling and publishing business with his brother George in
1825, mostly publishing schoolbooks, including Webster’s speller.
45
Worcester
hoped that his Comprehensive would be purchased by schools to use in the
classroom. However, without any agents in Ohio to advocate for the inclusion of
the books in schools, his dictionaries languished. Guilford reported back to
Worcester that of the 1,000 printed, most were still on hand. The chief buyers, he
reported, were private gentlemen.
By 1835, Worcester had begun working on an abridged version of his
dictionary, especially for common schools. He wrote to Guilford about
publishing it in Ohio. At that time, the market for school dictionaries in that area
belonged to John Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, a popular British work
first published in 1791. Although it was quite out of date, the book was favored
because of its cheap price (Guilford estimated it was sold for between 37 and 57
cents).
46
Unfortunately for Worcester, Guilford had decided to get out of the book
publishing business and focus on his type foundry, so he would not print the
book. Other Cincinnati publishers also declined to publish Worcester’s School
Dictionary.
47
Worcester eventually ended up simply sending copies from Boston

45
Sutton, 39.
46
The dictionary was first published in England in 1791, but reprints appeared until 1864.
See Jonathon Green, Chasing the Sun: Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They Made (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1996), 239.
47
Nathan Guilford to Joseph E. Worcester, April 13, 1835, Worcester Papers, MHS.

111
to local bookstores. But because there were no agents to push the dictionary into
the schools, they sold poorly.
48

In the 1850s, however, Worcester and his new publishers, Swan, Brewer,
& Tileston, were ready to try again for a share of the school market in Ohio.
49
In
addition to hiring two agents to work in the state, William D. Swan himself went
to Ohio to make friends with various school officials.
50
By all accounts, he was
somewhat successful. In 1852, he was elected an honorary member of the Ohio
State Teacher’s Association.
51
The Merriams, however, were not ready to roll
over for Worcester. As they told William G. Webster in 1852, “We are sparing no
reasonable expense at the West, to fix the system there, in opposition to the
efforts of the Publishers of Worcester’s School Dictionaries...”
52
Indeed, the
Merriams spent countless dollars across the United States in order to buy
influence. Their chief agent in Ohio was T.A. Nesmith, a lawyer with many
political connections in the state. Nesmith helped the Merriams not only in Ohio,
but also in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa.
53
Nesmith’s ultimate
goal was to get a Webster’s American Dictionary in each school district, and if
possible, each school.
54
He met with politicians and school officials, often offering
a copy of the dictionary in exchange for their support. He approached editors of
Democratic, Whig, and Free Soil newspapers, in order to get their support for

48
Nathan Guilford to Joseph E. Worcester, November 20, 1836, Worcester Papers, MHS.
49
George and Charles Merriam to Huntington, April 23, 1852, William G. Webster
Papers, New York Public Library.
50
George and Charles Merriam to William G. Webster, April 19, 1853, William G.
Webster Papers, NYPL.
51
Ohio Journal of Education, no. 1 (Columbus: Scott & Bascom, 1852), 7.
52
George and Charles Merriam to William G. Webster, April 24, 1852, William G.
Webster Papers, NYPL.
53
T.A. Nesmith to George and Charles Merriam, January 27, 1854, G. & C. Merriam
Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
54
T.A. Nesmith to George and Charles Merriam, March 19, 1868, G. & C. Merriam
Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

112
legislation mandating the purchase of dictionaries for the schools.
55
Nesmith also
spread the Merriam’s pro-Webster pamphlets, making sure they got into the
hands of people with influence. One pamphlet Nesmith circulated in Ohio
claimed that in Massachusetts, every school was furnished by the state with
Webster’s American Dictionary. Although this fact was untrue, it reinforced the
idea of Webster’s being the standard and therefore the safe choice.
56
This notion
was important, because, as mentioned in chapter 2, Webster’s dictionary was
known for its somewhat eccentric spelling (even though, by the 1850s, much of
Webster’s original spellings had been changed by subsequent editors). Other
pro-Webster editorials in Ohio were also probably planted by Nesmith. In 1853,
an article in the Ohio Journal of Education, employing a metaphor which also
served to remind readers of Webster’s strong religious beliefs, noted that, “the
time will soon be here, when the pulpit will be as complete without the Bible as
the Teacher’s desk without its Webster’s Dictionary.”
57

This editorial turned out to be prophetic. In 1853, Ohio passed its general
school law, which created a fund for school libraries through a property tax.
Thanks to Nesmith’s lobbying efforts, the library clause also included a provision
calling for Webster’s American Dictionary to be purchased for all school districts.
As one Ohio judge who supported the bill explained, “Introduce it and make it
the umpire in the school room, and I can assure you, sir, that its influence will

55
T.A. Nesmith to Merriams, February 20, 1854, G. & C. Merriam Company Archive,
Beinecke Library, Yale University.
56
William D. Swan, “A Reply to Messrs. G & C. Merriam’s Attack Upon the Character of
Dr. Worcester and His Dictionaries” (Boston: Jenks, Hickling, and Swan, 1854), 3, 22.
57
“Dictionary in Schools,” Ohio Journal of Education 2, no. 10 (September 1853): 352-353.

113
soon be felt and appreciated, not only in our schools, but throughout the entire
community.”
58

For the first three years after the bill had passed, over 30,000 different
volumes were distributed. During this time, the Merriams and Nesmith focused
on getting Webster’s into other state schools. In 1854, they even published a
pamphlet, which was heavily circulated, entitled “The Dictionary in the School-
Room; Containing Hints Upon the Importance of Its Use as a Text-Book, and the
Manner of Using It; Also, Facts Which May Aid In the Selection of the Best
Work.” The pamphlet included testimonials from booksellers across the United
States attesting to the rapid sale of Webster’s dictionaries. Knight, King, & Co., of
Cleveland, Ohio, for example, claimed that in the past year they had sold 450
copies of Webster’s school edition, 200 of the high school edition, 100 copies of
the academic edition, and 300 of the university edition.
59
In 1856, however,
debates about the cost and management of the library program caused the
legislature to suspend it. With this suspension, the decision over which books to
purchase went back to individual districts, and the war began anew.
60

That same year, Nesmith wrote to the Merriams with a list of names of
people on the Cincinnati school board that they needed to influence.
61
At the top
of that list was Anson Smyth. Pennsylvania-born Smyth was the editor of the
Ohio Journal of Education, and eventually became the State Commissioner for

58
“Remarks of Honorable H. Rice,” Ohio Journal of Education 2, no. 3 (March 1853): 86.
59
George and Charles Merriam, “The Dictionary in the School-Room,” (Springfield: G. &
C. Merriam, 1854), 19.
60
James J. Burns, Educational History of Ohio (Columbus: Historical Publishing Co., 1905),
238-240.
61
T.A. Nesmith to G. & C. Merriam, July 3, 1856, G. & C. Merriam Company Archive,
Beinecke Library, Yale University.

114
Common Schools.
62
While Smyth did not believe that the dictionary was a proper
book for the school libraries, he did agree to help Nesmith arrange for a contract
with various districts that was separate from the library bill. In turn, Nesmith
offered to pay for the cost of a circular that was sent from Smyth to each school
district, encouraging them to purchase copies of Webster’s American Dictionary.
63

Nesmith was just one of many agents who canvassed the country for
Webster. One teacher in Ohio, Brice S. Hunter, who was sympathetic to
Worcester explained to the Cambridge lexicographer how some of these agents
worked: “For some years I have labored to have teachers introduce your works, I
have generally succeeded, but have sometimes found, where the school was
supplied, that in my absence an agent of Webster with a douceur in his hand
proffered to a mercenary teacher, my labors overturned.”
64
Hunter’s account of
bribery was corroborated by an actual dictionary agent, James Henry Foss. As
Foss noted in his memoirs:
Nearly every school official ‘had his price,’ wanting to know what there
was in his vote for him, and the agent who best concealed the bribery
hook by dining and wining teachers and committeemen, filling their
libraries with complimentary books and their pockets with secret
commissions, ‘caught the most fish.’
65

Even if they could not manage to bribe a school official, book agents had
another sure-fire method: reduced price or even free books. Indeed, Webster’s
and Worcester’s publishers both used this tactic to gain ground for their books in

62
Burns, 441-442.
63
T.A. Nesmith to Merriams, November 11, 1859, G. & C. Merriam Company Archive,
Beinecke Library, Yale University.
64
Brice S. Hunter to Joseph E. Worcester, November 13, 1860, Worcester Papers, MHS.
65
James Henry Foss, The Gentleman From Everywhere (Boston: James Henry Foss, 1902),
126-127.

115
important territories.
66
In 1853, a teacher and friend of the Merriams in New
Jersey let them know that an agent of Worcester’s had been in the city of
Paterson, giving copies gratis to the teachers and editors of the city and also
offering Worcester’s Dictionaries for half price, or even a greater discount if they
were exchanged for Webster’s Dictionaries.
67
In 1857, D. Tilton, another
important agent for Merriams who worked mostly in New England, told them
that he had given the Rhode Island Normal School two dozen copies of Webster’s
Counting House Dictionary for half the retail price.
68
The hope was that when the
school needed more supply, they would then continue to purchase that
particular book. Unfortunately, as James Henry Foss explained, schools did not
always do this. In Foss’s experience, “when [schools] needed another supply,
they would swap even with another publishers, so that our bread cast upon the
waters never returned.”
69

The fights among reference and schoolbook publishers to get their books
into the classroom only intensified after the Civil War. By 1870, one newspaper
estimated that there were between 300 and 400 school-book agents across the
United States. At that time the money being spent on agents was so high that
thirty prominent school-book publishing firms formed the Publishers’ Board of
Trade.
70
They hoped to reform the school-book business, making it less costly for
publishers and more agreeable to schools. They ultimately agreed to a number of

66
For evidence of the Merriams engaging in this practice, see Swan, 23. For evidence of
Jenks, Hickling, and Swan giving away free books, see George and Charles Merriam to William
G. Webster, Springfield, June 19, 1850, William G. Webster Papers, NYPL.
67
S.C. Merrill to George and Charles Merriam, April 6, 1853, G. & C. Merriam Company
Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
68
D. Tilton to George and Charles Merriam, January 4, 1857, G. & C. Merriam Company
Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
69
Foss, 128.
70
“School-books and School-Book Publishing,” Christian Union, August 20, 1870, 103.

116
different reforms to limit the abuses by agents. Each publisher was limited to
only eight agents in a particular city center, and the prices for books were fixed,
so that agents could not offer substantial discounts. Educators hailed the reforms
as good news. The Massachusetts Teacher exclaimed, “Whatever battles must be
fought in the future, let the weapons be the best text-books that can be produced;
and all hurling of big dictionaries, and plastering over eyes with greenbacks, be
ruled out as unfair.”
71
Unfortunately, this agreement did not last long. Just four
years later, the Board assented to pressure and increased the number of agents in
each city to twenty-five. By 1877, after the withdrawal of two large publishers,
the Board was disbanded, and the fight for the schools raged on.
72

Selling Reference Books by Subscription
Book agents brought reference books into the classroom, but also into
people’s homes. This kind of distribution method came to be known as
“subscription publishing.” The subscription book-business was highly profitable
during the second half of the nineteenth century, distributing hundreds of
thousands of books and making millions of dollars for publishers. Much like
critics do today with Amazon.com, some even predicted that the subscription
trade would make bookstores a thing of the past.
73
While the exact beginnings of
the industry are disputed, subscription publishers seems to have gotten their
start in New England during the 1830s. For a time, Hartford, Connecticut was the
center for this business, although few subscription reference books were

71
As reprinted in American Educational Monthly, August 1870, 346.
72
John Tebbel, “Textbook Publishing,” 2:559-562.
73
The New York Times noted in 1872, “People are more and more finding books so
expensive and libraries so accommodating, that they are ceasing to patronize the regular trade.
They either buy from agents or read in public libraries.” New York Times, June 19, 1872.

117
published there.
74
Within two decades, the majority of book publishers in New
York, Boston, and Philadelphia had subscription book departments. Eventually,
Chicago became the center of subscription book publishing, in large part because
of its proximity to rapidly growing Western markets. Despite how widespread
subscription publishing became, scholars don’t know much about how these
firms and divisions worked, especially in relation to the retail trade.
75
This is
unfortunate, because the experience of reference book publishers shows that a
significant amount of capital, labor, and administrative oversight was required in
order distribute these books. As one publisher wrote in 1880, “The
administrative machinery requisite for canvassing a country coextensive with the
bounds of the United States and the Dominion of Canada has not been built up
in a day.
76
Three examples of subscription book publishers operating in
Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago illustrate just how complicated the
business of distribution really was.
J.M. Stoddart and Co. was a publishing house in Philadelphia run by
Joseph M. Stoddart. Stoddart had long been connected with J.B. Lippincott & Co.
before he decided to strike out on his own. In 1875 Stoddart began
manufacturing an American reprint of the ninth edition of A.C. Black & Co.’s
Encyclopaedia Britannica, in twenty-one volumes. The book was sold by
subscription only. By 1880, Stoddart had 500 agents across the country, whom he
claimed had sold 15,000 subscriptions.
77
Individual agents were overseen by
network of over a dozen general agencies. In the West, Stoddart relied on A.L.

74
Tebbel, 2:516.
75
No book has been written about subscription publishing in the United States. There is
one unpublished master’s thesis on the topic from 1943. See Marjorie Stafford, “Subscription
Book Publishing in the United States, 1865-1930” (M.A. thesis, University of Illinois, 1943).
76
Stoddart’s Review, March 20, 1880.
77
Stoddart’s Review, March 13, 1880.

118
Bancroft & Co. in San Francisco; Brown and Holdoway in St. Louis, Missouri;
and G.T. Craven & Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio.
78
He used Moses Warren and later
John L. Atwater to sell the encyclopedia in Chicago. In the South, N.D.
McDonald & Co. in New Orleans acted as general agents. They also controlled
branch houses in Charleston, S.C. and Galveston, Texas. Closer to home, the
O’Byrne Brothers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, J.H. Matteson in Buffalo, New
York, Joseph Wilson in New York City, and Frank Rivers in New England sold
the book. Finally, J.D. Carson acted as general agent in Philadelphia, while also
overseeing branch houses in Baltimore and Washington D.C.
79
Despite all this
assistance, Stoddart was not content to let his agents and general agents do all
the work for him. As mentioned in chapter 2, Stoddart was fighting with the
publishers Little, Brown, & Co., who technically had the sole rights to publish the
Britannica in the United States. Their agents were competing with his agents, and
so they spread false information to subscribers about the solvency of Stoddart’s
company. To assure readers that he could be trusted, Stoddart began publishing
his own weekly and later monthly magazine, called Stoddart’s Review in 1880. It
was sent to all subscribers and mostly included promotional articles about the
Britannica and details on Stoddart’s legal battles with Little, Brown & Co. It ran
for two years before being taking over by another Philadelphia magazine, the
American.
80

78
Hubert H. Bancroft was himself a successful subscription publisher. See Harry Clark, A
Venture in History: The Production, Publication, and Sale of the Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
79
Stoddart’s Review, March 20, 1880.
80
Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1850-1865 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1970), 41.

119
Founded in 1825, D. Appleton & Co.

was one of the most well-known
subscription book publishers.
81
A description of the layout of their office building
from 1894 sheds light on just how important subscription books were to the
firm’s bottom line. The building was six floors, with the first floor being entirely
devoted to their subscription and educational book departments. The third floor
was reserved for their encyclopedia and dictionary departments. A sign written
in gilt letters with just the title “American Cyclopaedia” hung in their window
and announced the importance of one of their signature publications.
82

D. Appleton & Co. first began publishing the American Cyclopaedia by
Charles A. Dana and George Ripley in 1857, completing the last volume in 1863.
Even though the book was published during the Civil War, a turbulent time for
most businesses including publishers, D. Appleton & Co. still managed to sell
“tens of thousands of sets,” thanks to the work of a legion of agents. These agents
offered the American Cyclopaedia to readers on an installment plan, whereby they
would only have to pay a certain amount each month. As mentioned in chapter
2, D. Appleton & Co. also sold a yearly supplement to their encyclopedia, called
the Annual Cyclopaedia. First published in 1861, the book sold 24,000 copies its
first year.
83
This too, was sold by subscription. According to James C. Derby, who
managed the subscription department for Appleton in the 1870s, the American
Cyclopaedia could only have been sold by subscription, because of the high cost of
production. Derby claimed that each volume of the revised edition (which was
published in 1872) cost the publishers thirty thousand dollars, and that the whole

81
One company history even claimed that D. Appleton “originated the method of selling
books by means of a personal house-to-house canvass.” This is not true. See Grant Overton,
Portrait of a Publisher (New York: D. Appleton), 45.
82
New York Times, June 22, 1894.
83
D. Appleton-Century Company, The House of Appleton-Century (New York: D.
Appleton-Century, 1936), 10-11.

120
work cost almost half a million dollars.
84
The investment seems to have paid off,
however, because by 1884, the book had sold more than 1.5 million volumes.
85

Although D. Appleton & Co. relied on subscription books, they did not
abandon the retail trade. Indeed, they managed their own bookstore in New
York City, where all of their books were on display and available for purchase.
Still, despite D. Appleton & Co.’s use of both methods of distribution, the
relationship between booksellers and subscription publishers was complicated.
For the most part, booksellers resented how subscription books were eating into
their profits. Through the press, and especially in trade publications like
Publishers’ Weekly and the American Bookseller, booksellers did their best to
discredit the books offered for sale by subscription. This dismissal has in turn
lead many modern scholars to similarly downplay the importance of
subscription books to the trade during this period.
86
But even when booksellers
decried the supposed high prices and low quality of some subscription books,
they always made an exception for reference books. “Some works,” the American
Bookseller admitted in 1886, “such as large encyclopedias, costly illustrated
works, and the like, could not be undertaken without some subscription list to
justify the outlay.”
87
Speaking to a crowd of booksellers in 1898, Edward L.
Dillingham, who worked for the subscription book department at New York
publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons, echoed this sentiment, noting that because
they were so expensive to produce, selling books like the Encyclopaedia Britannica
and the Century Dictionary by subscription was the only way they “could be

84
James C. Derby, Fifty Years Among Authors, Books and Publishers (New York: G. W.
Carleton, 1884), 183.
85
Ibid.
86
See, for example, Tebbel 2:511-534.
87
American Bookseller, July 1, 1886, 6.

121
profitably published.”
88
As the subscription publishing system continued to
grow, booksellers gradually realized that they too could profit from this method
of distribution. Many booksellers ended up acting as general agents for
subscription book publishers and even Publishers’ Weekly came to support this
practice.
89

Perhaps the most ambitious subscription book firm was the Werner
Company of Chicago. Founded in 1892, the Werner Company was the result of a
merger of several other companies including R.S. Peale Company and Werner
Printing and Lithography Company of Akron, Ohio. Their plan was to reprint a
high volume of educational books (mostly well-known books whose copyright
had expired) and sell them through agents for a low price. Most of the plates for
the books the Werner Co. published came from the old Belford-Clarke Co., which
had been famous for its reprints of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In addition to the
Britannica, the Werner list included a number of other reference books such as
the People’s Family Atlas, Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, and A Guide to
Systematic Readings in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
90
The principal men involved
had invested $3,500,000 into the company, making it, according to Paper World,
“the most heavily capitalized publishing company ever organized in the
world.”
91
The Werner Co. relied on a labor force of 6,000 people to manufacture
their books. Although we don’t know exactly how many books they issued, their
goal in 1893 was to produce at least 2,000,000 volumes of encyclopedias alone, an

88
“Subscription Book Publishing,” Publishers’ Weekly, April 9, 1898, 654.
89
“The Subscription-Book Trade,” Publishers’ Weekly, March 26, 1898, 583; “Selling
Subscription Books,” Publishers’ Weekly, April 23, 1898, 714.
90
George Eugene Sereiko, “Chicago and Its Book Trade, 1871-1893” (Ph.D. diss., Case
Western Reserve University, 1973), 324-326.
91
Paper World, February 1893, 12. As quoted in Sereiko, 325.

122
impressive number of books.
92
Throughout the 1890s the firm enjoyed
extraordinary success. It was only after the Panic of 1898, and the failing health
of one of their principal partners, that the Werner Co. disbanded.
93

The Costs of Subscription Books
Encyclopedias were often sold by subscription out of necessity. As we
have seen, multi-volume encyclopedias were extremely expensive for publishing
houses to produce. In addition, few Americans could afford to pay the cost for a
complete set upfront. Thus, selling in installments, volume by volume, made a
lot of sense (and it also helped publishers increase their profit margin).
Americans could then pay for the complete set over time, instead of having to
provide the entire cost upfront. While the overall cost of a complete set of
scholarly encyclopedias was quite high, publishers and agents tried to convince
readers that they were getting a bargain. One piece of promotional material for
the American Cyclopaedia explained to potential subscribers that the price was
actually quite moderate, being “less than one cent per page!”
94

While the encyclopedias sold by subscription tended to be the same as
those one might find in a bookstore, subscription dictionaries could be quite
different. Where as traditionally dictionaries were sold in one volume,
dictionaries sold by subscription could be multi-volume affairs. One subscription
edition of Worcester’s Quarto Dictionary that was sold in 1880 was furnished to

92
Sereiko, 325.
93
Tebbel, 2:448.
94
Canvassing book for George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, American Cyclopaedia (New
York: D. Appleton, 1873), Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania Rare Book &
Manuscript Library.

123
the subscriber in twenty parts, at 50 cents per part.
95
In 1870, Charles and George
Merriam contracted with J.B. Lippincott & Co. to produce a subscription edition
of Webster’s American Dictionary. They made an agreement to sell the dictionary
in four parts, exclusively “through canvassers and the canvassing trade.” The
Merriams simply used their old plates and added Lippincott’s name to the title
page. Indeed, many subscription books were reprints from existing plates.
96
The
dictionary was to be sold for no less than $12 for a complete set. Lippincott also
specified in their agreement with the Merriams that the paper and print could
not be inferior to the trade edition of Webster’s.
97
J.B. Lippincott & Co. later
produced another subscription edition for the Merriams in twenty-four parts.
98

These editions apparently sold quite well, and the Merriams only terminated
their relationship with J.B. Lippincott upon learning that the firm had bought the
plates and copyrights for Worcester’s Dictionary.
99

George Washington Davis, the head of the canvassing department of D.
Appleton & Co in the 1880s, claimed that the most money in subscription books
was made by selling expensive books.
100
However, cheap reference books were
also sold by agents. Pirated reprints offered one opportunity for readers to
purchase an expensive reference work for less. While one volume of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica could cost as much as $10, Henry G. Allen & Co. of New

95
Stoddart’s Review, March 27, 1880, 23.
96
Hackenberg, “Subscription Publishing,” 65.
97
J.B. Lippincott & Co. to George and Charles Merriam, April 28, 1870, May 4, 1870, G. &
C. Merriam Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
98
Webster’s New Illustrated Royal Quarto Unabridged, part 2 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott &
Co., [1870s?]), Madeline Kripke Collection.
99
J.B. Lippincott & Co. to George and Charles Merriam, February 5, 1877, G. & C.
Merriam Company Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
100
“Successful Book Agents,” Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of
Agriculture, June 30, 1883, 4.

124
York sold their reprint for as low as $1.50 a volume.
101
Similarly, S.W. Green’s
Son of New York sold a four-volume reprint of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia for $2.50
a volume.
102
In addition to large, multi-volume scholarly encyclopedias, there
was another class of works that also referred to themselves as encyclopedias and
could be purchased for much cheaper. These books often contained random facts
such as the populations of various cities, and principal battles in the Civil War.
They also included information on grammar, spelling, pronunciation, as well as
legal and medical advice. Books like the Household Cyclopedia of General
Information (1871), Armstrong’s Giant Cyclopedia (1894), and the Complete
Compendium of Universal Knowledge (1895) sold for between $1.75 and $3.50,
depending on binding.
103

Dictionaries could be even cheaper. In 1890, when the copyright for
Webster’s had expired, the Merriams faced competition from many other firms
(such as the Werner Company) also claiming to sell “Webster’s Dictionaries.”
These books, the Merriams told readers, were out of date, poorly made, and sold
exclusively by canvassers to “persons of small means who have the most
praiseworthy ambition to improve their minds, their style, or their language.”
104

The Merriams had their own reasons for disparaging these books, but they could
not deny that they were a bargain. These “fake” Websters sold for less than half

101
See advertisement in American Bookseller, February 28, 1891, 147.
102
See advertisement in American Bookseller, September 15, 1882, 546.
103
Canvassing book for Henry Hartshorne, The Household Cyclopedia of General Information
(Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Zell, 1871), canvassing book for K.L. Armstrong, Armstrong’s Giant
Cyclopedia and Treasure of Practical Knowledge (Chicago: Schulte Publishing, 1894), canvassing book
for William Ralston Balch, The Complete Compendium of Universal Knowledge (Chicago: National
Publishing, 1895), Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania Rare Books & Manuscript
Library.
104
“Misleading Reprints,” American Bookseller, April 15, 1890, 207.

125
of what the Merriams usually charged.
105
The point is, there was a wide variety in
the cost people paid for reference books, even those sold by subscription.

Control Through Communication
The mass distribution of reference books was the direct consequence of a
carefully coordinated effort by publishers. According to business historian
Alfred Chandler, the rise of modern business enterprise was the result of
companies exerting more control over the market.
106
This strategy came to be
known as “systematic management.”
107
One way in which nineteenth-century
businesses did this, as JoAnne Yates has argued, was by creating a system of
internal communication, based on written documents.
108
Manuals, circular letters,
and forms assisted in both “downward communication,” wherein management
explained rules and regulations to employees, and “upward reporting,” by
which employees could provide information back to management.
109
Reference
book publishers exercised their administrative control over agents to assure the
mass distribution of their books. Publishers worked with regionally based
middlemen (called “general agents”) to help hire and monitor agents. They also
prepared standardized sales kits (called “canvassing outfits”) and detailed
instruction forms to ensure that all agents, no matter where they located, were
consistent in their message to readers.

105
See, for example, canvassing book for Webster’s Common Sense Dictionary (Philadelphia:
International Publishing, 1902), Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania Rare Book &
Manuscript Library.
106
Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
(Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977), 209-219.
107
The term was first coined by Joseph A. Litterer. See Litterer, “Systematic Management:
The Search for Order and Integration,” Business History Review 35 (Winter 1961): 461-76.
108
Yates, xv.
109
Yates, 65-100.

126
When an agent accepted the job from the publisher, the first thing they
received was a canvassing outfit. This package tended to include a canvassing
book, order forms, weekly reports, and publishers guarantee cards. Canvassing
books were very important to the work of the agent, as they not only convinced
people to buy the book but also helped them to keep track of orders and
deliveries.
110
They were designed to show people the actual size of the volume,
and they generally included excerpts from the book (which tended to be heavy
with illustrations), recommendations from noted persons, and in the back, space
to record names of subscribers. As Keith Arbour has noted, these books were
deliberately incomplete. They provided just enough text to give readers a taste of
the book, but not too much for them to recognize that they were not interested.
111

In addition, the space in the back for the names of subscribers was not only for
the agent—the lists helped convince readers that they too needed the book in
question. Indeed, many subscription books, especially reference books, were
considered status symbols, and putting your name on a public list was evidence
of your own learning and gentility. Finally, different styles of binding were
pasted in the back of a canvassing book, as choice of more expensive bindings
was one way publishers and agents could garner additional profits on the book.
As canvassing books were a quick give away that someone was an agent, advice
books to agents recommended that agents keep them in a pocket or satchel while
walking around town. While making their pitch, however, agents were

110
These books were also called “sample books” or “prospectuses.” On the distinctions
between these terms, see Keith Arbour, Canvassing Books, Sample Books, and Subscription Publishers’
Ephemera, 1833-1951 (Ardsley, NY: Haydn Foundation for the Cultural Arts, 1996), xv-xvi, xvii.
111
Arbour, xxi.

127
instructed to keep their canvassing book in their hands at all times. These books
were the most important tool an agent had to make a sale.
Publishers also tended to insert pamphlets or other notices in the
canvassing books that were confidential and for agents only. These instructions
offered advice on how to sell the book, and agents would not show these
pamphlets to the customer. Depending upon the publisher, these documents
could be completely generic or entirely specific. The publishers for Webster’s
Common Sense Dictionary actually told their agents which pages in the prospectus
to turn to and what to say to make the sale. For example, they asked agents to
turn to a page in the book that was filled with illustrations of recent inventions to
prove to people how new and up to date their dictionary was.
112
One piece of
advice was given over and over again to agents by publishers: know your book
and know what you are going to say. If a specific script was given to them,
agents were expected to memorize it. As A.J. Johnson explained to new agents,
“We have men at work on our Cyclopaedia who are making over $600 per
month, and in every instance they are men who, before they undertook the
canvass, memorized the entire Description verbatium…”
113

Book agents, like other traveling salesmen during this period, were often
required to write detailed weekly reports so that publishers knew what an agent
was doing in the field. These were required in addition to their order forms. A.J.
Johnson’s reports for his agents included questions about their assistant (the local
person agents hired to help introduce them to others in the community), how

112
“Practical Suggestions to Agents, Or, How to Sell Webster’s Common Sense
Dictionary” in canvassing book for Webster’s Common Sense Dictionary (Philadelphia: International
Publishing, 1902), Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania Rare Books & Manuscript
Library.
113
As quoted in Lisa Lindell, “Bringing Books to a ‘Book-Hungry Land’: Print Culture on
the Dakota Prairie,” Book History 7 (2004): 226.

128
many people they visited, how many books they sold, and what townspeople
thought of the work in general.
114
Through these reports, agents provided
valuable information to publishers, not just regarding their individual sales
records, but also relating to the general economic conditions of a particular area.
This information could then be used to add more agents, in necessary, or shift
agents to other locations.
The final item in many canvassing outfits was publishers’ guarantee cards.
These little pieces of paper, about the size of a business card, were given to
customers after the sale had been made. The agent would sign the cards, which
guaranteed that the book would be delivered at the exact price agreed upon.
They also stipulated that the book would be equal in quality to the canvassing
book. If they customer was not satisfied with the book, for any of these reasons,
the card promised that they could return the books to the publishers for a full
refund.
115
It is not clear how much subscribers actually used these cards, or if
they were just there to inspire confidence in the buyer.
Publishers assigned agents specific territories in which to sell. Advice
books encouraged them to travel by foot if possible, or by horse if absolutely
necessary.
116
As cities were considered more difficult, most agents started in rural
areas. They sold all year round, although weather did have an impact on sales.
Summer was considered a good time to visit merchants in cities whose pace of

114
Some of these reports from agents to Johnson for his other works (not the
encyclopedia) survive in the Lewis W. Fairchild Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale
University.
115
On the use of publishers guarantee cards, see The Book Agent: A Manual of Confidential
Instructions (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft, n.d.), 43; The Art of Canvassing; or, What to Do, and What
Not to Do, to Achieve Success (Hartford, CT: A.D. Worthington, 1880), 7, Zinman Collection,
University of Pennsylvania Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
116
Agent’s Companion: A Manual of Confidential Instructions (Philadelphia: Jones Brothers
& Co., [1866-1869?]), 18, Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania Rare Book & Manuscript
Library.

129
work was perhaps a little slower. On the other hand, autumn and winter were
more ideal times to visit farmers and those living in rural areas.
117
Rainy weather
was an especially good time to canvass, according to one advice guide, as it
generally meant that farmers were in their homes and had time on their hands to
listen to a pitch.
118

While publishers aimed for a mass market, selling books door to door
required a highly personal approach. Once they arrived in a town, agents first
had to find appropriate lodging. Agents stayed in hotels or boarding houses, or,
if they were very lucky, in a private home.
119
Agents were encouraged to dress
well and make sure their appearance was neat. As one advice book put it, “the
external appearance of a gentleman…is often a passport to society.”
120
The
appearance of gentility was also essential in order for agents to get subscribers to
trust them. Their next step was to make arrangements with local newspapers to
publish editorials announcing their arrival and touting the quality of their book
(these announcements would never mention price). Agents paid for this positive
press by giving editors free copies.
121
For example, in 1871, Albert Loring, an
agent for Zell’s Encyclopedia, arranged for an editorial in the Maine Farmer which
touted the value of reference books in the home, and also introduced the
residents of Kennebec and Somerset counties to Loring. The editors assured
readers that Loring was respectable and trustworthy.
122
Some publishers
suggested agents take up a local assistant, someone who would introduce the

117
Hart, 14.
118
Agent’s Companion: A Manual of Confidential Instructions, 18.
119
The Art of Canvassing; or, What to Do, and What Not to Do, to Achieve Success, 13.
120
J. Walter Stoops, The Art of Canvassing. Or the Experience of a Practical Canvasser (New
York, 1885), 6, Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
121
Ibid, 6.
122
“A Reference Book for Every Home,” Maine Farmer, July 1, 1871, 1.

130
agent to all the best people in the town and vouch for them. Again, like the
advertisement, these introductions were seen as necessary in order to get people
to trust the agent.
The general rule was to start by approaching the most influential people
in a town. Seeing these respected names down on the list again gave the agent
more credibility with other townspeople. It was also a powerful inducement to
buy. As one advice book to agents explained:
On no account start your list with inferior names. It is better to reject them
entirely than to receive them at first, as it prevents influential persons
from subscribing. If, at any time during your canvass, you get a name of
your list that had a bad influence, erase it, or write it in the back part of
your book.
123

In order to secure these very important readers, agents were allowed to offer
town leaders a discount in the price of the books, and sometimes even gave the
books out to them for free. After selling to the leading figures in a town, agents
had different tactics when it came to whom to approach next. But the general
consensus among publishers was that agents should attempt to sell to anyone
and everyone, regardless of what they did or where they lived. Even children
were canvassed, as agents thought that they might be able to induce their parents
to buy.
124
In the cities, some agents canvassed by class. This tactic meant
approaching all the physicians, ministers, lawyers, teachers, insurance-men,
bankers, retailers, and others as a group.
125
For each group they sold to, agents
had a slightly different sales pitch. For example, when selling to those who lived
in rural areas, without easy access to many books, dictionaries and encyclopedias
were a complete library, and the only books they needed. In other words, they

123
The Book Agent: A Manual of Confidential Instructions, 11.
124
Agent’s Companion: A Manual of Confidential Instructions, 7.
125
The Art of Canvassing; or, What to Do, and What Not to Do, to Achieve Success, 24.

131
were a solution to scarcity. For those who were more educated, reference books
were marketed as a solution to abundance. They helped save people time by
finding them the exact answer they were looking for, without having to consult
multiple other books. Interestingly, a number of advice books warned agents
against selling to public libraries. The fear was that if others in the town knew
that the library had purchased the book, they themselves would be less likely to
buy it as they knew they would eventually be able to read it for free.
126
Libraries
could only be sold to after books had been delivered to subscribers.
127

Once an agent had thoroughly canvassed their territory, he sent his order
list to the publishers along with payment for at least some amount of the order.
Publishers preferred to receive payment through draft or money order.
128
If the
agent had to send currency, publishers recommended he do so via express.
Sending money in a registered letter was the least desirable means of payment,
as it was more likely to be stolen en route.
129
Publishers then fulfilled the orders
and sent the books to the agents. The turnaround time on the books depended
upon a number of different factors. Publishers might be able to fill the order in as
little as a few hours after receiving the agent’s letter, or if they were busy, or the
books unavailable, it might take them days. In addition, the method used to
transport the books to the agent also made a difference. Books were sent by
express, freight, or stage. Publishers and agents recognized that express was the
fastest and most reliable method to send books, but it was also the most
expensive. Railroads and steamboats were thus the preferred method for larger

126
See, for example, Agent’s Companion: A Manual of Confidential Instructions, 20.
127
Several of the canvassing books examined for this dissertation had libraries on the
subscription lists.
128
On the issue of credit in the book trade during this period, see Michael Winship,
“Distribution and the Trade,” in Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and Winship, 120-121.
129
The Book Agent: A Manual of Confidential Instructions, 52.

132
orders, as sending books by freight was substantially cheaper. One subscription
publisher, Eaton and Mains in New York, told agents that they could only ship
by freight if the order was greater than twelve books or four Bibles.
130
Of course,
trains and boats were also subject to a number of different interruptions and
delays that could push the delivery date back even further. One publishing
company in the late 1860s estimated that it took between three to eight days for
most agents to receive their orders via express.
131
Another claimed that agents
who ordered their books via express could expect their books in two to ten days,
and agents who ordered by freight could expect them anywhere from four days
to a month later.
132
Because of this uncertainly, agents were instructed never to
promise subscribers that they would receive their books on a certain date. In
addition, while the agents waited, they were encouraged to keep canvassing.
Once the books finally arrived, agents had to deliver them to subscribers
and collect their money. Such as task was not necessarily easy, as some
subscribers would not have the money or would try to back out of the deal.
Others might just not be at home when the agent called. One publisher estimated
that agents generally lost from five to ten subscribers in a hundred. In order to
keep these kinds of losses to a minimum, publishers again gave agents a number
of different tips. For example, in manufacturing towns or areas with coal mines,
one publisher advised agents to deliver books as soon as possible after pay day,
so that they could get to subscribers before they spent their entire income.
133

130
“Eaton & Mains Subscription Book Department” order blank (New York: Eaton &
Mains, n.d.), Zinman Collection of Canvassing Books, University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and
Manuscript Library.
131
Agent’s Companion: A Manual of Confidential Instructions, 21.
132
The Book Agent: A Manual of Confidential Instructions, 54.
133
Agent’s Companion: A Manual of Confidential Instructions, 21-22.

133
Taking Books to the People

Trade card featuring agent from the People’s Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge (New York: Phillips
and Hunt, 1887). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

Although advice guides for agents reveal how agents were supposed to
sell books, they do not tell us how agents actually sold books. Luckily, several
reference book agents wrote memoirs of their experiences. These memoirs were
either self published or issued by minor firms. The fact that none of these
memoirs seem to have been published by a major firm could be because these
books exposed some of the underhanded tactics used by agents. These memoirs
might have been appealing to readers because they functioned as a kind of travel
literature, chronicling all the places agents journeyed to in order to sell books.
The stories included in the memoirs are useful because they give us some idea of
the specific strategies used to sell encyclopedias and dictionaries. Illinois-born S.
James Weldon was a book agent during the late nineteenth century who
eventually wrote a memoir of his life entitled Twenty Years A Fakir (1899). The
book details Weldon’s nearly ten years selling Bibles, miscellaneous books, and

134
finally, what he calls Banner’s Encyclopedia (a fictitious name), published in New
York City. Unlike the tales of financial ruin that routinely make up the
autobiographies of book agents, Weldon claimed that while selling $40
encyclopedias, “I made better money, came in contact with a better class of
customers, looked better, felt better and was better in bodily appearance and
mental condition than I ever was before.”
134
In one year, he claimed that he made
$12,000 in cash.
135
Weldon used a horse and carriage to travel from town to town,
making himself appear to be a well-to-do gentleman.
136
He maintained that while
he never sold to everyone, making a sale with two out of ten people a day was all
one needed in the encyclopedia business to make a good profit.
137

After his years in the book business, Weldon was an expert in answering
questions and responding to people’s hesitancies. If someone told them they had
no time to read, Weldon would explain that an encyclopedia was not meant to be
read every day as a newspaper or novel was. Even looking at it just once a month
would make the cost worthwhile. Weldon also encouraged people to buy by
taking advantage of public confusion over international copyright. He would
claim that this was their last chance to get the work at a cheap price, before
changes in copyright law meant that they would have to pay royalties to the
British publishers. As he explained, “This was always safe, because the
international copyright law has been talked of for a hundred years, and today

134
S. James Weldon, Twenty Years a Fakir (Omaha, Neb.: Gale City Book and Novelty,
1899), 298-299.
135
Weldon, 341.
136
Weldon, 299.
137
Weldon, 324.

135
not one man in a thousand has any accurate knowledge of what the law amounts
to, or how it affects the publishing business.”
138

Dictionary agents had similar tactics in order to get people to buy their
books. James Howard Mortimer, the author of Confessions of a Book Agent (1906),
claimed in his preface that the book was not autobiographical, but that he was
simply telling the story of a man he had met, a Captain Durand. Whoever the
agent was, the book provides interesting details about what it was like to sell
reference books. In the account, Durand finds himself traveling by train around
Illinois selling a four-volume encyclopedic dictionary. He relied heavily on his
canvassing book, which included “three columns of comparisons, showing the
meager information conveyed by the definition of words as given in two of the
‘word books,’ and the extensive fund of lore that could be obtained from the
work which I was handling.”
139
Indeed, Durand was not the only agent to rely on
comparisons with other reference books in order to make a sale. One unnamed
agent for the Standard Dictionary in the 1890s wrote out his own table in which he
compared the number of specialists used for his dictionary, the Century
Dictionary, and Webster’s American Dictionary. His list made it clear that the
Standard relied on a much larger group of experts in all subject matters. The
agent even had the list bound into his canvassing book, so he could easily show
prospective subscribers.
140

Durand was also always ready to hear objections. When a druggist told
him he already had a dictionary, a Webster’s from 1856, Durand was quick to let

138
Weldon, 327-328.
139
James Howard Mortimer, Confessions of a Book Agent (Chicago: Cooperative Publishing,
1906), 123.
140
Canvassing book for Isaac K. Funk, ed., Standard Dictionary of the English Language
(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1893), Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania Rare Book &
Manuscript Library.

136
him know how out of date the work was.
141
Like Weldon, Durand found the life
of a reference book salesman quite profitable. He claimed on a good day he could
sell twenty subscriptions.
142
His account also gives a glimpse into the variety of
readers who purchased from him. He sold dictionaries to politicians, teachers,
doctors, station agents, ministers, and even a justice of the peace.
143

Another dictionary agent who wrote about his experiences was James
Henry Foss. Foss was a New Englander who began his career by working for the
Boston publishers Brewer & Tileston, selling Worcester’s Dictionary in the 1860s.
He claimed to be an excellent salesman, sometimes making up to $100 per day.
He did so well that Brewer & Tileston made Foss an agent not just for the
dictionary but for all of their publications. In his memoirs, Foss describes how
intense the competition was when it came to selling books. It was not
uncommon, he noted, for twenty agents to work in the same town.
144
In the
1890s, Foss returned as a dictionary sales agent, but this time for Webster’s
American Dictionary. He was sent to the West where his competition was no
longer Worcester but the Standard Dictionary.
145
He traveled throughout Utah,
California, Oregon and Washington to fight many “dictionary battles.” Foss was
able to secure the adoption of Webster by schools in every county his visited. He
did so well that the publishers wanted him to remain an agent in the West
permanently, this time, focusing not on schools but on door-to-door sales. The
catch, he explained, was that he would not be salaried and would have to rely
only on commissions made by him and his sub-agents. Other conditions had

141
Mortimer, 134.
142
Mortimer, 124.
143
Mortimer, 124, 137.
144
James Henry Foss, The Gentleman From Everywhere (Boston: James Henry Foss, 1902),
126-127.
145
Foss, 250.

137
changed as well. Recent laws had made it harder to be a book agent (such as one
that required a licensing fee of $20 a week). More and more agents seemed to be
everywhere. In addition, “the majority of the people were poor; the rich were
already supplied with dictionaries; and the schools would have no funds
available with which to buy reference books for nearly a year.”
146
And so,
frustrated with this situation, Foss resigned his position and returned to the East
Coast.
147
Foss’s experience highlights the fact that for publishers, selling reference
books in schools was just as important as selling them door to door.

Readers of Subscription Books
Agents traveled across the country selling books, but who actually bought
them? The canvassing books that agents carried around with them offer one way
to help get at the question of audience. Scholars who have examined these
sources for other nineteenth-century subscription books have found that
subscribers included merchants, teachers, carpenters, bookkeepers,
housekeepers, mechanics, grocers, dentists, postmasters, attorneys, farmers and
more.
148
Recent scholarship also suggests that the audience for these books was
far more diverse than has been previously assumed.
149
One book agent explained
the range of her customers thusly:
Very literary people prefer to trade with bookstores, but there are lots of
rich people who like to buy books, and if you can take a book to them in
good shape, and can give it to them in nice enough binding, they will
subscribe. Then there is another class who buy books, and you’ll find the
class quite numerous in country towns. Here is a young farmer, for

146
Foss, 279.
147
Ibid.
148
Alice Fahs, “The Market Value of Memory: Popular War Histories and the Northern
Literary Marketplace, 1861-1868,” Book History 1 (1998): 117-118.
149
Amy M. Thomas, “’There is Nothing So Effective as a Personal Canvass’: Revaluing
Nineteenth-Century American Subscription Books,” Book History 1 (1998): 140-155.

138
instance, who knows very little about Dickens or Thackeray or Herbert
Spencer, but who has had a good common school education, reads the
newspapers and likes books of travel and adventure. He’s a good
customer and buys a very good class of books. We find these same self-
made men in cities who have about the same ideas and buy books in the
same way.
150

Although we know reference books were commonly sold by subscription,
few canvassing books for dictionaries and encyclopedias during this period
survive. Of those that do, only a small proportion actually include the names of
subscribers. These canvassing books cannot and should not be taken as
representative. At the same time, they offer a unique glimpse at a few of the
many readers of nineteenth-century reference books.
W.H. Ashton, a graduate of Harvard, was a book agent for Boston’s
Hickling, Swan & Brewer. In 1855, he traveled to New York to take subscriptions
for the 1860 library edition of Worcester’s Dictionary of the English Language for
$7.50.
151
This kind of canvassing, in which an agent solicits subscribers before a
work is even published, has long been used by publishers to help cover printing
costs. Although five years in advance seems quite early to begin taking
subscriptions, according to Worcester, his publishers were hoping his work
would be completed much sooner than it actually was.
152
The subscribers listed
in Ashton’s canvassing book were some of New York’s elite, including poet and
journalist William Cullen Bryant, biblical scholar George Bush, writer
Washington Irving, editor George Pope Morris, painter Jared B. Flagg, railroad
investor Isaac Sherman, architect Leopold Eidlitz, and doctor Augustus K.

150
“A Beautiful Book-Agent,” Daily News (Denver), November 11, 1885.
151
The library edition was different from the standard edition in that it was on extra-fine
paper and had large margins.
152
Joseph E. Worcester to Olive Gay Worcester, December 5, 1858, Swanton Family
Papers, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University.

139
Gardner.
153
Perhaps because of Worcester’s own religious views, a number of
prominent Unitarian preachers also subscribed, such as Henry W. Bellows,
Samuel Longfellow, and Edwin H. Chapin. The final subscriber was the
Mercantile Library of New York. Founded in 1820, the library was originally
designed for merchants’ clerks and other young businessmen, but by the Civil
War, was open to anyone who could pay the yearly dues, including women. In
1854, it already had 4,500 members.
154
The presence of reference books in libraries
like the Mercantile is important to note, because it meant that even if members
did not have their own copies of these works, they still had access to them
through the library.
Two sample books for Webster’s American Dictionary offer another look at
the readership of reference books. In addition to going directly to homes,
reference book agents also seem to have left sample books at hotels. These
sample books were probably put on display in a hotel’s reading room, library, or
parlor. As A.K. Sandoval-Strausz has shown, nineteenth-century hotels were
important sites for commerce and salesmen peddled many different goods and
services to hotel guests and visitors.
155
Although it is not clear how many people
might have purchased their dictionary or encyclopedia after leafing through a
sample book at a hotel, the presence of these books in hotel lobbies makes a
powerful statement about implied readership. By the mid-nineteenth century,
there were many different types of hotels to suit the needs (and budgets) of

153
Canvassing book for Joseph E. Worcester, Quarto Dictionary (Boston: Hickling, Swan,
and Brewer, 1855), Beinecke Library, Yale University.
154
Thomas Augst, “The Business of Reading in Nineteenth-Century America: The New
York Mercantile Library,” American Quarterly 50, no. 2 (1998): 276, 280.
155
A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, Hotel: An American History (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2007), 242-243.

140
American travelers.
156
Existing evidence suggests that sample books were placed
in high-end hotels that catered to urban professionals. One such sample book for
Webster’s American Dictionary from the 1860s even had the name of the hotel,
Warriner House in Springfield, Massachusetts engraved on the cover.
157
The
Warriner House was one of the first hotels in the city, and was actually located
across the street from the G. & C. Merriam Co. office. The Massachusetts Medical
Society held their annual meeting there in 1855.
158
Another surviving sample
book of Webster’s American Dictionary from 1865 belonged to the Eagle Hotel in
Concord, New Hampshire. The engraved cover admonished readers to “please
let this remain here.”
159
The Eagle Hotel also catered to Concord’s elite.
Politicians (including President Franklin Pierce), doctors, and bankers all passed
through the hotel’s doors.
160

One final canvassing book for the American Cyclopaedia sheds light on who
purchased encyclopedias during this period.
161
The copyright on the canvassing
book is from 1873, although it is not clear that this is the date when the agent
actually began his or her work. Other details from the book suggest that the
agent was canvassing as late as 1876.
162
The book includes the names and

156
Sandoval-Strausz, 75-109.
157
Specimen of New Features in Webster’s Dictionary. Pictorial Edition. (Springfield: G. & C.
Merriam, [1860?]), Madeline Kripke Collection.
158
“Annual Dinner of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Warriner House, Wednesday,
June 27, 1855,” (Springfield, Massachusetts: Samuel Bowles, 1855), Broadsides Collection,
American Antiquarian Society.
159
Specimen Pages of Webster’s Dictionary. New Illustrated Edition. With 3000 Engravings.
(Springfield: G. & C. Merriam, 1865), Madeline Kripke Collection.
160
These guests and the events they attended were frequented mentioned in the local
newspaper. See, for example, Farmer’s Cabinet, September 7, 1859; November 28, 1861; February
11, 1864.
161
Canvassing book for George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, eds., American Cyclopaedia
(New York: D. Appleton, 1873), Zinman Collection, University of Pennsylvania Rare Book &
Manuscript Library.
162
Later subscribers to the book listed their address as the White Building in Syracuse.
This building was not completed until 1876.

141
addresses of 230 subscribers, most of whom lived or worked in Syracuse, New
York. Nine of the subscribers were women, and of those, seven of them were
married. This scarcity of women buyers does not necessarily imply that women
were not reading the encyclopedia, as men were the main household purchasers
during this period. Indeed, as Cathy N. Davidson has explained, “In a social and
economic context that privileged male buying and reading, any evidence of a
female readership becomes a significant literary and sociological
phenomenon.”
163
The list includes some of Syracuse’s more prominent citizens,
such as the former mayor Elias W. Leavenworth, merchant Thomas Emory (the
great-great grandson of Benjamin Franklin), businessman and judge James
Jerome Belden (who offered to build a library for the town), and Daniel J.
Halsted, the publisher and proprietor of the Syracuse Daily and Weekly Courier and
Union. Doctors, lawyers, and bankers were well represented, but the list also
included a saloon owner, a distiller, a merchant tailor, a potter, and a U.S.
Express Agent. A number of subscribers worked in transportation, either for the
railroad or the canal. Others worked in industry: Jason Keefe, for example,
manufactured salt, George Barnes manufactured knives and sickles, and Joli D.
Gray manufactured ladies’ shoes. Two subscribers were pastors at Catholic
churches. At least three were professors or educators. None of the readers whose
occupation could be verified seem to have been working-class. The majority of
the names were men who can be categorized as high or low white-collar
workers.
164
Finally, in addition to individuals, a number of organizations

163
Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004 [1986]), 65.
164
Based on the five-level scale of occupational categories developed by Stephan
Thernstrom, “On the Socioeconomic Ranking of Occupations,” in The Other Bostonians: Poverty

142
subscribed to the Cyclopaedia. These included the Library of the Court of Appeals,
a lyceum, a local high school, and Syracuse University.
165

Between 1840 and 1880, reference book publishers increasingly turned to
agents to help them get dictionaries and encyclopedias in the hands of readers. In
the beginning, publishers focused their energies on schools and schoolchildren,
but after the Civil War their efforts expanded to include men and women in
towns and cities across the United States. Although agents technically worked on
their own, publishers made sure, through the use of standardized sales kits and
other communications, that agents were doing their job correctly. Agents played
an important role in popularizing reference books by stressing their usefulness
and educational attributes. But what did readers themselves make of these
books? And how did they use them? The ways in which readers were changed
by the industrial expansion of reference knowledge are explored in the next
chapter.

and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975),
289-302.
165
I identified subscribers using a local business directory as well as town and county
histories. See Andrew Boyd, Boyd’s Business Directory of Over One Hundred Cities and Villages in
New York State (Albany: Charles Van Benthuysen & Sons, 1869); Edward Smith, A History of the
Schools of Syracuse from Its Early Settlement to January 1, 1893 (Syracuse, N.Y.: C.W. Bardeen, 1893);

Gurney S. Strong, Early Landmarks of Syracuse (Syracuse: Times Publishing Co., 1894); Edward
Hagaman Hall, ed., Register of the Empire State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (New
York: 1899); Dwight J. Stoddard, Notable Men of Central New York (New York: Dwight J. Stoddard,
1903); William M. Beauchamp, Past and Present of Syracuse and Onondaga County, vol. 2 (New
York: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1908).

143

Chapter Four
Knowledge at Hand

The son of a farmer and local politician, Maine-born Oscar Dunreath
Grover was a studious boy who loved math and writing poetry. After graduating
from Delaware College in 1855, Grover planned to practice law. Although he
passed the bar, he decided to teach instead.
1
In 1857, he became the Principal of
Paris Hill Academy in Paris, Maine.
2
In the ensuing decades, he fought in the
Civil War, spent some time in the West, and eventually returned home to his
family’s farm in West Bethel.
3
At some point in his life, Grover became the owner
of an 1855 edition of Joseph Worcester’s A Pronouncing, Explanatory, and
Synonymous Dictionary of the English Language.
4
He indicated his ownership by
inscribing his name throughout the text (no other name is listed). The book was
designed for college students, so it is possible that Grover purchased it during
his last year at Delaware.
5
Grover’s dictionary is notable because tucked within
its pages are a variety of scraps. Some of these mementoes are difficult to date,
such as a poem by the nineteenth-century Scottish writer Charles Mackay, a
doctor’s prescription for a German laxative, a small card with a religious
quotation on it, a piece of blue plaid fabric, a dried flower, and a list of words
starting with the letter “a” compiled by an N.B. Grover. Other scraps suggest that
the book was in use for many decades after it was published. The dictionary

1
William B. Lapham, History of Bethel (Augusta, ME: Maine Farmer, 1891), 552, 554.
2
William B. Lapham and Silas P. Maxim, History of Paris, Maine (Paris, ME: 1884), 182.
3
Lapham, History of Bethel, 554.

4
Joseph E. Worcester, A Pronouncing, Explanatory, and Synonymous Dictionary of the
English Language (Boston: Hickling, Swan, and Brown, 1855), private collection of the author.
5
As Worcester explained in his preface, “In the preparation of this work, the author has
endeavored to adapt it to the use of the higher schools and seminaries of learning.” Worcester, A
Pronouncing, 4.

144
contains, for example, a piece of a telegram from the Great Northwestern
Telegraph Company (established in 1880 in Canada), political advertisements
from 1880s Maine gubernatorial candidates Harris M. Plaisted, Frederick Robie,
and John B. Redman, a business card for the Boston hops dealers the Dole
Brothers (who were active during the late nineteenth century), and a publishers’
guarantee card from the 1890s for the book Darkness and Daylight by reformer
Helen Campbell.
Did Grover add all of these items himself, turning his dictionary into a
personal repository? Or were items added by subsequent readers, such as family
members or even Grover’s students? It’s impossible to know for sure. Still,
Grover’s copy of Worcester reveals an important point about nineteenth-century
reference books: readers made them their own. Grover resisted the authority of
Worcester, and chose to engage with the book in his own way. This chapter
explores some of the many ways in which readers used reference books,
including for self-education, entertainment, and for display. It also discusses how
the proliferation of dictionaries and encyclopedias might have encouraged
readers to compile their own reference books. Finally, I show how, by the 1880s,
reference book reading became an important part of middle-class domestic life.

Reading and Responding to Reference Books
As chapters two and three explained, between 1840 and 1880, reference
books were made in a variety of different formats designed for a variety of
different readers. But what did readers really think about reference books and
how did they actually use them? As numerous historians of the book have

145
shown, readers are not simply passive consumers of text.
6
Readers actively
engage with books, making their own meanings and coming to their own
conclusions.
7
At the same time, reconstructing those meanings is no easy task. In
recent years, scholars from many different disciplines and time periods have
looked for innovative ways to better understand readers’ relationships with
print.
8
In her study of twentieth-century romance novels, literary scholar Janice
Radway interviewed her readers.
9
Literary scholar Cathy N. Davidson has used
inscriptions and marginalia to analyze the meanings of novels to readers in early
America.
10
Finally, historians Ronald and Mary Zboray have combed through
diaries and letters to better understand readers in antebellum New England.
11

When it come to understanding how nineteenth-century readers
interacted with dictionaries and encyclopedias, letters and diaries are
particularly helpful. The papers of lexicographer Joseph Worcester, for example,
are filled with letters from readers, especially learned men, who reflect on their
own use of the dictionary. John Kelly of Rhode Island wrote to Worcester in 1854
to thank him for his lexicographical efforts. He explained, “ever since I have been

6
The notion of reading as an active process was first described by Michel de Certeau. See
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984).
7
For some examples of this argument, see Barbara Sicherman, “Ideologies and Practices
of Reading,” in Casper, Groves, Nissenbaum, and Winship, 279-302; Cathy N. Davidson, ed.,
Reading in America: Literature and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
8
See, for example, Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, ed., A History of Reading in the
West (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999); Barbara Ryan and Amy M. Thomas,
eds., Reading Acts: U.S. Readers Interactions with Literature, 1800-1950 (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 2002).
9
Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984).
10
Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004). For one example of marginalia found in a nineteenth century
dictionary, see Tim Cassedy, “Seeing the Rebel: Or, How to Do Things with Dictionaries in
Nineteenth-Century America,” J19 2, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 2-13.
11
Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Everyday Ideas: Socioliterary Experience
Among Antebellum New Englanders (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006).

146
old enough, the study of words has always been a favorite pursuit, and a form of
great satisfaction to me.”
12
Some men who wrote to Worcester seemed almost
obsessed with reference books. Writing in 1860, the Boston lawyer George
Stillman Hillard admitted that “for my own part, I have a ravenous appetite for
books of reference. I never write without having Johnson, Richardson, Webster,
and Worcester, all within reach…”
13
Reverend H.H. Ballard of Kentucky wrote to
Worcester in 1861 to describe his “ungovernable inclination to read
dictionaries.”
14
Finally, Professor Fitz Edward Hall of New York told Worcester
in 1860 that he consulted Worcester’s dictionary “at least ten times daily.”
15

Men were not the only ones who responded to Worcester’s dictionary.
Samuel Spring of New York told Worcester in 1856 that his daughter, a teacher,
had stolen his dictionary from him, much to his chagrin. He noted that she
especially appreciated its assistance in the pronunciation of classical names.
16

Maria Mitchell, the well-known astronomer, asked a friend in 1860 if she had a
copy of Worcester’s Dictionary of the English Language, and then noted that she
“read it continually.”
17
In fact, Mitchell’s interest in dictionaries extended even
further: she eventually went to visit Samuel Johnson’s house during a trip to
London.
18

12
John Kelly to Worcester, Warren, RI, June 27, 1854, Worcester Papers, MHS.
13
G.S. Hillard to Swan, Brewer, & Tileston, Boston, March 19, 1860, Worcester Papers,
MHS.
14
Rev. H.H. Ballard to Worcester, Owenton, Kentucky, May 28, 1861, Worcester Papers,
MHS.
15
Prof. Fitz [?] Edward Hall to Worcester, Troy, NY, February 20, 1860; Worcester Papers,
MHS.
16
Samuel Spring to Worcester, East Hampton, March 24, 1856, Worcester Papers, MHS.
17
Maria Mitchell to Unknown, May 12, 1860, in Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals,
comp. Phoebe Mitchell Kendall (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1896), 171.
18
Maria Mitchell, August 19, 1857, 104.

147
Probably because reference books came to form such a central part of their
studies, children and young adults were the most likely to comment on their use
of reference books in their letters and diaries. Family members or friends
purchased reference books for children, and encouraged them to use them in
their letters. The writer Lydia Maria Child wrote to her ten-year old friend Anna
Loring in 1840, teasing her about her studies. She said, “if you are lost someday
and cannot be found, I shall think you are shut up between the leaves of the big
dictionary.”
19
In 1852, Katharine Bigelow Lawrence noted in her journal that
while in France, a family friend, M. Van De Weyer, had taught her “an excellent
mode of obtaining information.” The trick was to “have the best biographical
Dictionary always lying upon one’s table, and at every stray moment (of which
everybody has some during the day) to take it up and read if not a life a part of
one and continue at the next opportunity.” Lawrence went on to explain that in
part because of this method, Mr. Van De Weyer had read the French historian
Joseph Francois Michaud’s Biographical Dictionary three times. She also noted that
she would try to practice this advice.
20
Two young women even wrote letters to
Joseph Worcester. Their letters suggest their own engagement with dictionaries.
Octavia Young from Kentucky asked Worcester in 1860, “Is there such a thing as
hope without expectation?”
21
Addie Young, also from Kentucky, wrote
Worcester in 1865 to ask how to form the plural of chase.
22

Other letters from and to children hint at the connection between reading
reference books and writing. In 1860, Wallace Clement wrote to his younger

19
Lydia Maria Child to Anna Loring, March 20, 1840, Loring Family Papers, Schlesinger
Library, Harvard University.
20
Katharine B. (Lawrence) Lowell diary, September 8, 1852, Lamb Family Papers, MHS.
21
Octavia Young to Worcester, November 13, 1860, Worcester Papers, MHS.
22
Addie Young to Worcester, February 20, 1865, Worcester Papers, MHS.

148
brother, who was at school in Burlington, Vermont. He reminded him to “take a
Dictionary when you write place it beside you and when you come to a word
that you do not feel certain about just refer to it and soon you will form the habit
of correct spelling.”
23
Reference books also provided plenty of material for
younger readers to extract and use in a commonplace book. In 1850, Helen M.
Warner of Boston noted in her diary that she had spent the afternoon copying an
article on “journals” from the Encyclopaedia Americana. The article itself argued
that it was important for young people to keep journals.
24
Of course, not all
young readers appreciated reference books. In 1831, Harriet Low of
Massachusetts noted that “the idea of lifting a Dictionary today is quite
dreadful.”
25

While these existing letters and diaries tend to privilege the experiences of
white middle- and upper-class readers, other evidence points to a wider
engagement with reference books. Before the Civil War, many slaves were
prohibited from learning to read. But for those who could read, after the Bible
and the newspaper, the dictionary was considered an important text. Lucius
Holsey, a house slave from Georgia (who later became a bishop), sold rags in
order to buy five books during the 1850s, including a speller and a school
dictionary. He described how he would “catch words from the white people and
retain them in memory until I could get to my dictionary. Then I would spell and

23
Wallace Clement to brother, October 28, 1860, Clement Family Papers, Vermont
Historical Society.
24
Helen M. Warner Diary, January 18, 1850, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections, New
England Historic Genealogical Society.
25
Harriett Low, Lights and Shadows of a Macao Life: The Journal of Harriett Low, Travelling
Spinster, ed. Nan P. Hodges and Arthur W. Hummel (Woodinville, WA: The History Bank, 2002),
220.

149
define the words, until they became perfectly impressed upon my memory.”
26

Still, while the dictionary could be an important tool for self-education, its
usefulness could also be limited, especially when it came to understanding the
political questions of the day. Frederick Douglass described how when he was
still a slave, he went to the dictionary to find the meaning of the term “abolition.”
All his dictionary told him was that abolition was “the act of abolishing.”
27

Americans encountered reference books in many different ways. While
the responses from the readers mentioned here were not necessarily typical, they
offer a unique glimpse at the growing role that reference books played in the
lives of American readers. And while readers may have used reference books in
one way, educators, reformers, and cultural authorities worked hard to make
sure Americans, both young and old, understood the correct way to use
reference books.

The Art of Skipping
Throughout the antebellum period, educators and reformers railed against
the practices of miscellaneous and discontinuous reading. Those who read in
fragments, they felt, were not really learning anything.
28
In 1838, the Unitarian
minister William E. Channing told a Boston audience that good books “must not
be skimmed over for amusement, but read with fixed attention and a reverential

26
As quoted in Janet Duitsman Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear”: Literacy,
Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991),
68.
27
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Boston: Anti-Slavery
Office, 1845), 42.
28
On Antebellum readers and their personal feelings on miscellaneous reading, see
Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Everyday Ideas: Socioliterary Experience Among
Antebellum New Englanders (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 171-172.

150
love of truth.”
29
Some even went so far as to argue that miscellaneous reading
had deleterious effects on mental and physical health.
30
As the Albion explained
of this time, “To skip was held to be the fatal symptom of that laxity of mind
which might in time lead to results so distressing as an aversion to sermons, a
passion for pastry, a preference for fiction over solid information, and other
similar depravities.”
31
This notion even extended to the reading of reference
books. The famed statesman Daniel Webster was once asked the best way to
learn how to use language skillfully. He was said to have replied, “Read
dictionaries. I read dictionaries.”
32
A satirical piece in the Spirit of the Times from
1843 told the story of a man named Walker Johnson Todd, from Webster,
Massachusetts. Todd went to Washington D.C. to report on government
happenings for his paper back home. But once he got there, he didn’t know how
to begin. He met a man (the supposed author of the piece), who advised him to:
“Take up your pen, spread out your paper, put a drop or two of vinegar in your
inkstand, swallow your dictionary, and go to work!” When Todd replied
incredulously, the man explained, “Swallow your dictionary!...Big words, and
enough of them, will carry the day against all odds.” Todd decided to take the
man’s advice and his letters from Washington quickly became popular and well-
known. A few weeks later, however, Todd passed away. It turned out that he
had taken the advice literally, enjoying many a “philological sandwich” until he
finally died.
33
While this story is little more than a tall tale, it humorously

29
William E. Channing, “Self-Culture,” in The Works of William E. Channing (Boston:
James Munroe, 1843), 2:378.
30
Isabelle Lehuu, Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum America (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 135.
31
Albion, A Journal of News, Politics, and Literature, March 28, 1868, 148.
32
Merry’s Museum and Parley’s Magazine, July 1, 1857, 180.
33
“The Man That Swallowed a Dictionary,” Spirit of the Times, April 1, 1843, 49.

151
illustrates the kind of intensive reading that was so praised during the
antebellum period. Even dictionaries were to be digested thoroughly by readers.
But after the Civil War, as the rising tide of information grew, this attitude
began to shift. Fragmented reading no longer made someone a superficial reader,
but instead, a savvy one. There was a general recognition that there were simply
too many books, and that an educated person could never hope to read them all.
One technique for coping was to learn the “Art of Skipping.” Advice books on
reading (which themselves proliferated during the late nineteenth-century) now
touted skipping as an essential skill to be learned.
34
Skipping was not easy, but
rather, something that had to be carefully mastered. The New Jersey librarian
John Charles Van Dyke noted that skipping was “one of the fine arts” and that it
required “the very keenest faculties of perception.”
35
Charles Francis Richardson,
a teacher and poet from Maine, advised his readers that skipping brought “a
riper and wholesomer harvest than would spring from the most painstaking
devotion to regulated and routine reading and study. One page, one sentence,
thus planted in the fertile soil of a receptive mind, is better than a whole library
read from a mere sense of duty...”
36

Even the famed educator Melvil Dewey, explained that “The skillful
reader makes a dictionary out of his library—he gets what he wants. He handles
books, not to say, ‘I have read so many books,’ but to get inspiration, new ideas
on the subject in which he is immediately interested, and he gets it where he can

34
On advice books see Louise L. Stevenson, The Victorian Homefront: American Thought and
Culture, 1860-1880 (New York: Twayne, 1991), 30-47.
35
John Charles Van Dyke, Books and How to Use Them: Some Hints to Readers and Students
(New York: Fords, Howard, and Hulbert, 1883), 48.
36
Charles Francis Richardson, The Choice of Books (New York: John B. Alden, 1883), 124-
125.

152
find it without needless dilution.”
37
Indeed, dictionaries and encyclopedias were
frequently invoked when the art of skipping was discussed. While reference
books have always been read discontinuously, the argument that skipping was
an art to be mastered was new. Just because readers knew how to look up a word
in the dictionary, did not mean they knew how to skip. At the same time, if they
wanted to use a reference book properly, they had to learn the “great secret” that
was the art of skipping.
38

To aid Americans in reading encyclopedias selectively, educator James
Baldwin published A Guide to Systematic Readings in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in
1895. The book pointed readers to specific articles within the Britannica that
Baldwin thought would be most useful to them, depending upon their
occupation. Baldwin hoped that by already sorting through all of the articles, he
could save people time and effort. For young people, Baldwin recommended
articles on a range of topics, including the history of the American flag, the Great
Wall of China, Captain John Smith, George Washington, how to tie knots, how
carrier-pigeons are trained, elephants, life in the ocean, and chariot races. Most of
these articles were related to history, biography, natural science, and sports. For
older students, Baldwin chose articles on history, literature, philology,
astronomy, biology, zoology, botany, geography, meteorology, mathematics,
physics, philosophy, the Bible, mythology, and the supernatural. The second half
of the book was devoted to adults. Clearly, Baldwin believed the Britannica was
of use to wide audience, as he wrote chapters aimed at many different
occupations including the manufacturer, the mechanic, the machinist, the

37
“The Art of Reading,” Friends’ Intelligencer, May 12, 1888, 304.
38
National Repository, Devoted to General and Religious Literature, Criticism, and Art, March
1879, 5, 284.

153
electrician, the architect, the engineer, the laborer, the farmer, the political
economist, the insurance agent, the policemen, the physician, the apothecary, the
chemist, the stenographer, the artist, the musician, the actor, and the home-
maker, among many others.
39

Ultimately, mastering the art of skipping was important to readers who
wanted to be able to quickly find the piece of information they needed. Armed
with their reference book and the knowledge of how to use it, readers were able
to answer any question that might come up. Such a skill proved to be especially
valuable when it came to participating in a spelling match, an event that surged
in popularity during the late nineteenth century.

Reference Books as Schoolbooks
As mentioned in chapter 3, the growth of the common school in the
United States brought with it a more standardized curriculum, as well as a
growing interest in pedagogy.
40
Schoolbooks thus came to play an important role
in the education of students. Curiously, however, while historians of education
have discussed the role of readers, grammars, arithmetics, and of course spellers
in the classroom, they have ignored the use of reference books as schoolbooks.
41

This oversight is especially odd because many of the authors of spellers also

39
James Baldwin, A Guide to Systematic Readings in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago:
The Werner Company, 1895).
40
On the history of the common school, see Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common
Schools and American Society (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); Lawrence A. Cremin, American
Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (New York: Harper Colophon, 1980). On the
relationship between common schools and literacy during this period, see Ronald J. Zboray, A
Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993), 96-104.
41
For general discussions of schoolbooks during this period (none of which mention
dictionaries), see Charles Monaghan and E. Jennifer Monaghan, “Schoolbooks” in Gross and
Kelley, 304-318; Charles Carpenter, History of American Schoolbooks (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1963).

154
compiled dictionaries.
42
Indeed, the line between spellers and school dictionaries
was complicated. Spelling books were foundational texts for all school children
in the United States. They essentially taught children how to read.
43
As noted in
chapters 2 and 3, school dictionaries were smaller, cheaper, simpler versions of
traditional dictionaries, and they became ubiquitous in schools thanks to the
determined publishers of Webster and Worcester.
44
For many children, the school
dictionary was their first reference book. Sometimes school dictionaries were
used instead of spellers, in which case they were referred to as “spelling
dictionaries.” Some texts tried to market themselves as in between options. In
1829, E. Hazen published the Speller and Definer, which was “designed to answer
the purpose of a spelling-book, and to supersede the necessity of the use of a
dictionary as a class-book.” Noah Webster’s son, William G. Webster, published
another combination speller and definer, called, A Sequel to the Webster Elementary
Speller, or Speller and Definer, in 1845.
Still, the idea that dictionaries and encyclopedias were essential texts for
the proper education of children was not a given in the early nineteenth century.
Writing in 1829, the author of one school dictionary, William W. Turner,
lamented the fact that the dictionary was not more often used in education. He
noted, “Let the instructor teach ideas as well as words; let the dictionary be
reinstated, and be made the textbook of all the upper classes…”
45
In addition,
many schools lacked even basic textbooks for each student, and thus did not

42
Noah Webster is the most famous example, but Lyman Cobb and Thomas Hopkins
Gallaudet were two other authors who wrote both dictionaries and spellers.
43
On spelling books, see E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage: Noah Webster’s Blue-
Back Speller (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1983); E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write
in Colonial America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 213-231.
44
Burkett, 43.
45
As quoted in Burkett, 64.

155
have additional funds to purchase dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, and other
books to create a reference library for students. However, by the mid-nineteenth
century, as more money was being provided by state legislatures for the creation
of school libraries, more and more educators began to rally for the purchase of
reference books for schools, especially dictionaries.
46
“Should not our children
and youth be early taught that the dictionary, if rightly studied, will help them to
think connectedly, to write with precision and grace, to speak with convincing
clearness and power, and so judge intelligently the writing of others?” wrote one
educator in 1859.
47
Another agreed, noting, “As teachers, we ought to see that
each of our pupils is provided with a suitable dictionary, and that he is taught to
use it. Let us insist upon it. The sooner we do so, the better will it be for our
pupils, ourselves, and the great cause of popular education.”
48

Educators argued that reference books were necessary for schools in large
part because they taught students self-reliance. Having reference books in the
classroom meant that when students had a question, or wanted to know more
about a certain topic, they could find the answer themselves. “When they have
been taught to search for knowledge for themselves, it is a daily pleasure to the
thoughtful teacher to witness their efforts…Little is really gained if the child
leaves school without acquiring a habit of thoughtful investigation,” maintained
one educator in the Connecticut Common School Journal in 1866.
49
Thus, the point
of having reference books in school libraries was not to give the students more to

46
See, for example, Noah Porter, “How Can the Dictionary be Used in a School to the
Best Advantage?,” Connecticut Common School Journal and Annals of Education, July 1854, 215.
47
Cynthia M. Bishop, “The Dictionary as a Schoolbook,” American Phrenological Journal,
November 1859, 74.
48
W.H. Venable, “Importance of the Dictionary in the Schoolroom,” Massachusetts
Teacher and Journal of Home and School Education, July 1861, 258.
49
Connecticut Common School Journal, January 1866, 9.

156
learn, but to teach them how to find information. With a reference book by their
side children did not have to rely on their teachers or even their parents. They
themselves could find the answer. One educator even went so far as to argue that
teaching children specific subjects was less important than teaching them how to
actually find information on those subjects (using reference books), as it was a
skill they could use for the rest of their life.
50

The Spelling Match
Educators used a variety of different methods to teach students how to
actually use reference books, including turning the process into a game. Spelling
schools (also known as “spelling matches” and later, “spelling bees”) date back
to mid-eighteenth century New England, but it was not until the second half of
the nineteenth century that these competitions became a cultural phenomenon
that spread across the United States. During this period, spelling matches shifted
from simple classroom exercises into full-blown winter social events. Indeed,
many were held at night so that parents and others from the community could
watch and participate. The spelling match was popular in large part because it
was seen as a morally uplifting activity similar to a lyceum lecture, a debating
club, or a singing school, but with a distinctly competitive edge.
51
Nonetheless,
these competitions did important work beyond simply providing entertainment.
Spelling matches taught Americans how to find information, and rewarded them
for doing so. In addition, matches encouraged Americans to question the
supposed authority of reference books that often times did not agree with one

50
Massachusetts Teacher, June 1868, 203.
51
Allen Walker Read, “The Spelling Bee: A Linguistic Institution of the American Folk,”
PMLA 56, no. 2 (June 1941): 495-512.

157
another. Webster and Worcester no longer had a monopoly on authoritative
spelling. It was participants themselves who debated the issue and ultimately
decided what spelling they thought was correct.
Spelling matches peaked in popularity during the 1870s. Most scholars
credit a book about frontier life, The Hoosier Schoolmaster by Edward Eggleston,
for touching off a spelling bee craze across the United States.
52
Eggleston was the
editor of the New York weekly Hearth and Home, which had been started by the
author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. In an effort to drum up readers,
he planned to write a three-part serial about rural life in Indiana. The first part
was so successful, however, he turned the story into a book instead. Published by
Chicago firm Orange Judd and Company in 1871, The Hoosier Schoolmaster was an
instant hit. It sold 20,000 copies in its first year. It was eventually reprinted in
England and France.
53
The narrative centers on a town spelling match. In the
story, Jim Phillips, a master speller who “knew more about the spelling-book
than old Noah Webster himself,” ends up getting outspelled by Ralph Hartsook.
But just as Ralph thinks he has beaten his most formidable competitor, he finds
himself up against a young girl, Hannah Thompson. Hannah did not go to school
and had never attended a spelling-match before.
54
To the surprise of everyone,
Hannah beats Ralph after correctly spelling “daguerreotype,” a word so new, it
was not even in the dictionaries yet. The moral of the story was that dictionaries
were powerful tools for self-education. In describing these matches, Eggleston

52
Eggleton’s brother noted, “His account of these [spelling] contests led to their revival
all over the country as a novel and amusing form of social entertainment.” See George Cary
Eggleston, The First of the Hoosiers: Reminiscences of Edward Eggleston (Philadelphia: Drexel Biddle,
1903), 46.
53
Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States (New
York: Macmillan, 1947), 199-200.
54
Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier School-Master (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883
[1871]), 49.

158
made them sound like a lot of fun. Spelling matches were also quaint reminders
of a simpler time. That is why, as antiquarian Sarah Loring Bailey noted in 1875,
the spelling match craze was less about an “awakening of the orthographical
conscience” and more about “a stirring of the sentiment for auld lang syne.”
55

Newspapers and magazines seemed fascinated by the trend. The Galaxy
commented in 1875 that “the outbreak of spelling matches all over the country, in
the cities as well as in the rural districts, is one of the striking social phenomena
of the day.”
56
New words were coined to describe people who love to spell. One
writer humorously termed it “orthographizooticianalityness.”
57
Another writer
explained that, “spellomania” was a disease that attacked “all persons, of
whatever age and degree.” People with “spellomania” were known for “their
devotion to the dictionary and spelling-book. Morning, noon and night, they will
be found bending over Webster’s Unabridged.” The author concluded, “Oh, if
Noah Webster could have lived to see this day!”
58
Indeed, spelling matches seem
to have encouraged readers to really use their dictionary. Writing in the New
York Evangelist, William E. Griffis noted that “many people who rarely dusted
the doors of their dictionaries, now open then daily to refresh their memory or
inform themselves concerning strange, curious, or even common words.”
59

Part of what was so interesting about the revival of the spelling match was
that these competitions were not limited to children. As Harper’s Bazaar
explained in 1875, “We hear of lawyers, ministers, and doctors, of teachers,

55
“Suggestions of the Spelling Match,” Sarah Loring Bailey, Advance, April 29, 1875, 602.
56
Galaxy, June 1875, 864.
57
Saturday Evening Post, June 19, 1875, 2.
58
Advance, April 15, 1875, 573.
59
William E. Griffis, New York Evangelist, April 22, 1875.

159
journalists, and cultivated women joining in the contest...”
60
Spelling matches
ranged from being small, family affairs to huge local gatherings. In Providence,
Rhode Island, one match involved over two hundred contestants.
61
Another
match in Boston pitted forty members of the press against forty schoolboys. In
the end, it was a high-school student who won the contest. The papers related
that over 3,000 people had come to watch.
62
There were even some reports that
claimed that people engaged in spelling matches over the telegraph wires.
63

Spelling matches helped to set off a related trend of pronouncing matches, which
were similar except the goal was correct pronunciation.
64

The reward for winning a spelling match was almost always the same: an
unabridged dictionary, often Webster’s. In some ways, such a prize seems
curious. Why would someone who could spell need a dictionary? But the reason
was that the dictionary offered more than simply the proper spelling of words.
The dictionary was a tool that students and adults alike could reach for time and
time again. During one spelling match in Vermont in 1869, a participant
described the value of the prize thusly: “There is a prevalent buzz, and many
twinkling eyes are fastened on the prize which lies upon the desk. It is a well-
bound quarto. It is a book which all scholars must have, which all those present
desired to have, but which only the best speller was destined to have—Webster’s
dictionary.”
65

60
Harper’s Bazaar, April 17, 1875.
61
Friends’ Review: A Religious, Literary, and Miscellaneous Journal, April 3, 1875, 524.
62
Youth’s Companion, April 15, 1875, 118.
63
New York Evangelist, April 22, 1875.
64
Advance, February 24, 1876, 468.
65
“A Spelling Match,” Oliver Optic’s Magazine, December 25, 1869, 817.

160
It would be easy to view this late nineteenth-century interest in spelling as
proof that Americans viewed dictionaries as authoritative. However spelling
matches actually engendered significant debates about spelling among
participants. Newspapers made note of the many disputes that regularly broke
out during matches when competitors, and their dictionaries, disagreed over the
spelling of a certain word.
66
As Kenneth Cmiel has shown, American intellectuals
were constantly fighting over language during the nineteenth century.
67
But
spelling matches show us that similar debates were also happening among
ordinary readers. Any illusion readers still had about the authority of reference
books was often called into question during a spelling match. These matches
even provoked some critics to wonder if there should be only one way to spell a
word. Asked to speak before a spelling match at Asylum Hill Congregational
Church in Hartford, Connecticut in 1875, the author Mark Twain told his
audience, “I don’t see any use in spelling a word right, and never did…We might
as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome;
variety is pleasing.”
68

Readers as Compilers
The mass production of reference books between 1840 and 1880 made
more people familiar with the genre, and in some cases seems to have inspired
Americans to create their own reference books. Whether it was a commonplace
book, a scrapbook, or an index, readers repackaged and reconfigured

66
See, for example, Harper’s Bazaar, April 17, 1875, 255; Eclectic Magazine of Foreign
Literature, July 1882, 103.
67
Cmiel, 11-19.
68
“Mark Twain on Spelling,” Advance, July 1, 1875.

161
information from various sources in multiple ways.
69
In doing so, they became
the compilers, deciding what information should be preserved and what should
not. While not all commonplace books or scrapbooks were used as reference
books, many of them were. Indeed, people often referred to scrapbooks as
“newspaper cyclopedias.” As explained by the Ohio Farmer in 1880, “By thus
concentrating these extracts we make them easily available and virtually our
own, and when a question arises on any of these points we refer to our scrap
book as we would to a dictionary.”
70
Scrapbooks, like reference books, were
useful supplements to memory.
Though we tend to think of scrapbook and commonplace books as
fundamentally miscellaneous, proper organization was seen as an important step
in creating these books. In her 1880 book, Scrapbooks and How to Make Them, E.W.
Gurley noted that classifying scrapbooks according to subjects and indexing
them when finished was essential for those who wanted their compilations to be
a useful book of reference: “If you want a recipe for making soap, you don’t want
to search among poetry and sentiment for it. Neither do you want your poetry
and pretty thoughts mixed with kitchen recipes.”
71
She suggested that readers
devote scrapbooks to a number of different categories including animals, bees,
history, nature, politics, pulpit, recipes, and science. One scrapbook category she
particularly recommended to readers was “facts and figures.” Gurley explained:

69
For the history of scrapbooks in the United States, see The Scrapbook in American Life,
eds. Susan Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia P. Buckler (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
2006); Ellen Gruber Garvey, Writing With Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the
Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). For commonplace books, see Earle
Havens, Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the
Twentieth Century (New Haven: University Press of New England, 2001).
70
Ohio Farmer, April 3, 1880.
71
E.W. Gurley, Scrapbooks and How to Make Them (New York: Authors’ Publishing
Company, 1880), 18-19.

162
I regard as one of the most useful in my collection. In this I have all kinds
of statistics, tables, important facts, and discoveries which could not be
classified elsewhere. In these books, which have already grown into three
volumes, I have a source of information at hand which I could not obtain
in any encyclopaedia or dictionary.
72

As early as the 1840s, Americans were making their own reference books.
The son of a Vermont farmer, Charles Morris Cobb was a prodigious reader and
writer. His diaries from the 1850s show that he spent hours reading—but that he
also made his own reference books. His diary details his plans for a
“Geographical, Historical, and Statistical Dictionary.” His process was simple: “I
took 8 sheets of paper, sewed them together, ruled each page into 3 columns,
[and] divided it amongst the letters of the alphabet…”
73
A few months later,
Cobb’s budding interest in politics led him to make another dictionary, this one
of men’s names who have held high offices in the United States. He used his
father’s old account book and wrote the names of America’s great men in the
back of it.
74

Cobb was not the only reader to take on the role of compiler. Henry David
Thoreau’s sister, Helen Thoreau, compiled an anti-slavery scrapbook in 1843,
which she shared with her fellow members of the Concord Female Anti-Slavery
Society. She included an index at the end of the scrapbook, to make it of even
greater use to the society members.
75
In 1849, Enoch Hale, a newspaper editor
from Massachusetts, compiled a reference book that included a list of his own
reading, important notes from those books, newspaper scraps, and excerpts from

72
Gurley, 23.
73
Charles Morris Cobb Diaries, March 18, 1852, Vermont Historical Society.
74
Charles Morris Cobb Diaries, September 2, 1852, September 10, 1852, September 26,
1852, October 5, 1852, VHS.
75
Robert A. Gross, “Helen Thoreau’s Antislavery Scrapbook,” Yale Review 100, no. 1
(January 2012): 103-120.

163
borrowed books.
76
Finally, William Dorsey, a founding member of the
Philadelphia American Negro Historical Society, created a scrapbook on
“Colored Centenarians” in which he cut out isolated newspaper articles from
1860 to 1899 and brought them together in one book. He even added a table of
contents according to name.
77

By the 1870s, the practice of scrapbooking had become so popular that
publishers introduced many different books to help people organize and keep
track of information. Commercial scrapbooks with blank pages for readers to fill
in were marketed throughout the nineteenth century, the most famous of these
being a scrapbook album sold by Mark Twain in 1877.
78
For those interested in
using their scrapbook as a reference book however, the Topical Scrapbook
System, sold by C. Venton Patterson Publishing Co. in New York in 1889,
promised to help readers easily arrange their information for “ready reference”
by selling scrapbooks for different subjects for 75 cents a book.
79

But why make your own reference book when you could simply buy one?
Nineteenth-century Americans had a number of reasons for compiling their own
personal books. First and foremost, compiling was an educational practice that
had a long history.
80
Teachers urged students to read with a pencil and paper in
hand, ready to copy down things of importance. Creating one’s own reference
book was a way to remember and truly absorb what one had read. One exemplar
continually held up to students was President James Garfield. Garfield was
known as a prodigious maker of scrapbooks and commonplace books. The

76
Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Everyday Ideas: Socioliterary Experience
Among Antebellum New Englanders (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 27.
77
Garvey, 137-142.
78
Garvey, 60-86.
79
Methodist Review, November 1889, 969.
80
See Blair, Too Much to Know.

164
Youth’s Companion offered Garfield as an example of how to read well, noting
that he “worked hard to so master knowledge that it would respond to his
slightest command, and this be at all times a valuable servant.”
81
It was also an
especially important way to keep track of information from borrowed books,
which readers would not always have on hand.
Another reason Americans created their own books of reference was that
it was often less expensive than buying one. Newspapers were numerous and
cheap—and many scrapbook makers pasted articles into the free Patent Office
Reports or other books they no longer needed.
82
As one anonymous reader
explained to the Christian Advocate, “…Many of us who read your paper are so
pressed financially that we find it difficult to obtain even the absolutely
necessary books. For such as these it is a fortunate thing that your paper is in
such shape that its pages can be bound together, and make a handy reference
volume of valuable matter.”
83
Finally, as Ellen Gruber Garvey has noted,
Americans created scrapbooks in order to provide a space for topics that
traditional dictionaries and encyclopedias did not address. The journalist
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, for example, explained to her readers in 1880 that
scrapbooks were an important and necessary means of recording the history and
progress of women’s rights.
84

Reference Books and the Family Library

81
Youth’s Companion, October 20, 1881, 370.
82
Gurley, 35-36.
83
Christian Advocate, November 24, 1881.
84
Garvey, 197.

165

Scrapbook house from the 1870s featuring family library filled with reference books, including
Webster’s Common School Dictionary. Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Joseph Downs Collection
of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera.

Historian William J. Gilmore has argued that, between 1780 and 1835,
New Englanders gained access to an increasing amount of printed materials,
including almanacs, broadsides, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, and books.
Through a close examination of probate inventories, Gilmore found that most
family libraries during this early period contained Bibles, hymnals, and prayer
books. But he also noted the presence of secular works, especially schoolbooks
and dictionaries.
85
Although Gilmore does not distinguish between school
dictionaries and general dictionaries in his overall analysis, he does mention that
Perry’s Royal Standard English Dictionary, first printed in the United States in
1788, tended to be particularly popular among family libraries that included
dictionaries.
86
Still, even among the most elite group Gilmore studied, which he

85
William J. Gilmore, Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural
New England, 1780-1835 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 192.
86
Gilmore, 327, 341.

166
termed “fortunate village families,” only forty percent owned dictionaries.
87
Far
fewer owned encyclopedias. Out of the sixty-two fortunate village family
libraries, only eight contained encyclopedias, although two families had shares in
an encyclopedia library.
88
Between 1840 and 1880, however, more and more
Americans began to purchase dictionaries and encyclopedias. And by the 1880s,
these works came to be seen as the cornerstones of any family library, not just
those of the elite. The incorporation of reference books in home libraries was
ultimately a force for privatization, with children and parents looking things up
on their own. Ultimately, parents were able to enhance their authority with a
reference book, but children too could use reference books to act as their own
authority and challenge parental knowledge.
By the late nineteenth-century, educators, reformers, and others were all
in agreement: reference books were the foundations of any personal or family
library. In 1871, educator Noah Porter (who also happened to be an editor for
Webster’s Dictionary) explained to parents that “however ample are the facilities
furnished by the public library” families should own “an English dictionary, a
good atlas” and “an encyclopedia of some sort.”
89
Lymann Abbot, in his Hints for
Home Reading (1880), concurred, and encouraged his readers to, first and
foremost, “buy a dictionary, an atlas, and if possible, a cyclopedia.”
90
“Wherever

87
Gilmore, 341.
88
Gilmore, 342. Gilmore does not say much about the Windsor District Encyclopedia
Library, except that it specialized in encyclopedias.
89
Noah Porter, Books and Reading: Or What Books Shall I Read and How Shall I Read Them
(New York: Charles Scribner, 1871), 369.
90
In the Google books copy of Hints for Home Reading, a reader has underlined this
particular instruction. The reader might have been Charles A. Gunnison of San Francisco, whose
name is inscribed in the front of the book. The book was given to him by Timothy Hopkins in
1881. Lyman Abbott, Hints for Home Reading (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1880), 90.

167
there is a dictionary there is a beginning,” added the Literary World.
91
Indeed,
even though these books could be quite expensive, readers were told that “a
good cyclopedia, like a good dictionary, is not a luxury…”
92
As the Chautauquan
explained in 1885, “An encyclopedia is of as much value to the household as a
wood lot is to the farm. Better wear your old silk gown or shabby overcoat
another year, or two years even, and have your book of reference always at hand
for the general good.”
93
Writing in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1886, F.N.
Zabriskie concurred, noting that “there should be great self-denial in our
purchases till we have within reach our dictionaries (for in order to ‘get the best’
we must get several, and at least one which is more than a dictionary), our
cyclopaedias and concordances and commentaries…”
94
Why were these books
considered so essential? Critics believed that they were great tools of learning
that benefited both children and parents. They were also powerful symbols of
class. As Barbara Sicherman has argued, a “culture of reading” emerged during
the late nineteenth-century wherein regular reading of the right types of books
was not only encouraged, but was seen as a signifier of middle-class status.
95

Dictionaries and encyclopedias were considered good and uplifting books, and
were purchased by families across the country as a way to signify their
learnedness.

91
Literary World, October 15, 1887, 346.
92
Western Christian Advocate, October 25, 1882, 342.
93
Chautauquan; A Weekly Newsmagazine, February 1885, 268.
94
F.N. Zabriskie, “How to Choose a Library,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, October
1886, 370.
95
Barbara Sicherman, “Reading and Middle-Class Identity in Victorian America: Cultural
Consumption, Conspicuous and Otherwise,” in Reading Acts: U.S. Readers’ Interactions with
Literature, 1800-1950, ed. Barbara Ryan and Amy M. Thomas (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 2002), 137-160.

168
Because reference books were imbued with such significance, they were
often given as gifts.
96
Although the idea of a reference book as a gift was not a
new phenomenon, it was not until the late nineteenth century that publishers
began specifically marketing dictionaries and encyclopedias as appropriate gifts
for loved ones. In one such advertisement in 1876, D. Appleton & Co. advised
readers that the American Cyclopaedia made a great gift “from church members to
ministers,” “from Sunday-School teachers to their superintendents,” “from
scholars to their teachers,” “from citizens to school libraries,” “from artisans to
their foreman,” or “from a parent to a child.” The Cyclopaedia was also a
wonderful wedding or birthday present. What made the Cyclopaedia the perfect
gift? The ad explained that the book was “as noble and handsome an ornament
as a piece of plate and far more useful; it is choice, elegant, refined, appropriate,
and of lasting benefit to the recipient.”
97

The power of owning a reference book is further illuminated in piece of
fiction from the 1890s that was reprinted in several newspapers. The piece tells
the story of Miss Ruth Culberson, a young girl who buys an unabridged
dictionary at a fire sale for nineteen cents. Although her occupation is not given,
the reader is told that Ruth makes $10 a week, which she uses to support herself
and her mother. When Ruth’s mother sees the dictionary, she reproaches Ruth
for using their money on such a useless item. She tells Ruth that if she was going
to spend her money on books, she did not understand why Ruth did not just buy
some paperback novels that they could both enjoy. Ruth counters that she needs

96
Books were popular gifts throughout the nineteenth century. See Isabelle Lehuu,
Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2000), 80-81.
97
New York Times, December 6, 1876.

169
the dictionary to make up for the lack of an education she had as a child.
Although at first the mother is disapproving, she quickly becomes proud of the
fact that she and her family own a dictionary, and invites others in their boarding
house to come visit their parlor and use the dictionary whenever they need to
look something up. One boarder, the grocer Mr. Winter, ends up coming
frequently to their apartment to look up words that he cannot find in his own
small, pocket dictionary. One night, he stays late, seemingly absorbed in the
dictionary. Ruth asks him if he is all right, and he points her towards a certain
word in the dictionary. The word is “love.” He then asks if Ruth will marry him,
and she says yes. The moral of the story is clear: Ruth is rewarded for choosing
the right kind of reading. Rather than be a useless purchase, the dictionary not
only enhances her education but helps her attract a husband.
98

Once a family had purchased its reference books another question arose
among critics: where in the home did they belong and how should they be
displayed? The idea that there was a proper room for an encyclopedia, or a
proper way to store a dictionary, was a relatively new one. Beginning in the
1860s, more and more middle and upper-middle class Americans became
interested in the interior design of their homes. Accordingly, books on household
art proliferated, offering room-by-room advice on everything from wall color to
furniture to drapes.
99
In some senses, reference books were seen as decorative
objects.
100
Their presence in a home reflected the education and culture of their

98
“Proposing by Dictionary,” Massachusetts Ploughman and the New England Journal of
Agriculture, May 14, 1898, 7.
99
Martha Crabill McClaugherty, “Household Art: Creating the Artistic Home, 1868-
1893,” Winterthur Portfolio 18 (Spring 1983): 1-26.
100
Reference books were not the only books purchased for their looks. According to
Richard Minsky, as early as the 1840s, Americans were buying books as decorative objects.
Richard Minsky, The Art of American Book Covers, 1875-1930 (New York: George Braziller, 2010), 9.

170
owner. Like many objects, reference books became symbols of the cultural
aspirations of the middle-class.
101
And, while the costs of reference books had
gone down overall, the more affluent could purchase these books with a fine or
fancy binding. In 1876, the Riverside Press was selling a fine edition of Webster’s
Dictionary that had been bound in illuminated vellum and had been hand
decorated by the artist David Clarke.
102
In 1895, wealthy buyers could purchase a
leather-bound edition of the Standard Dictionary with gold stamping. As the
lexicographer Sidney Landau has pointed out, these elaborate binding made
reference books look like Bibles.
103
Thus, it makes sense that readers were keen to
put these books on display for all who came to visit them.
104

Still, the primary purpose of having a reference book in one’s home was to
actually use it. Thus, when it came to the place of reference books in the home,
critics agreed that they were to be located in a room where they would be within
arm’s reach of family members. This meant critics often advised against placing
reference books in the library, where they would most assuredly be forgotten on
a bookshelf and rarely used. As one writer explained, “The place then for the
family dictionary, is the living-room; the place which echoes through the day
with the patter of little feet; the cheerful apartment in which the entire home-

101
Louise L. Stevenson, The Victorian Homefront: American Thought and Culture, 1860-1880
(New York: Twayne, 1991); Simon Bronner, ed., Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of
Goods in America, 1880-1920 (New York: Norton, 1989).
102
See Publishers’ Weekly, July 1, 1876, 20-21. For more on the role of fine bindings in book
selling, see Megan L. Benton, Beauty and the Book: Fine Editions and Cultural Distinction in America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
103
Sidney I. Landau, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 86.
104
On the parlor as the “face of the house” see Karen Halttunen, “From Parlor to Living
Room: Domestic Space, Interior Decoration, and the Culture of Personality” in Simon Bronner,
ed., Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920 (New York:
Norton, 1989), 160.

171
circle gathers after night-fall; the sanctuary haunted by the household gods.”
105
In
addition, reference books were not treated like other books in the parlor. Instead,
they had their own special place in the room. Reader after reader wrote to the
lexicographers Noah Webster and Joseph Worcester to tell them that their
dictionary was a constant companion on their table. Indeed, readers were
advised to keep their dictionary out and on its own table, so that it would always
be available for ready reference. Scribner’s Monthly noted in 1881 that, “One of
the first things provided for in home furnishing should be the dictionary. Let it
have a stand or table of its own, where nothing ever need be placed upon its
open pages.”
106

In order to help readers find what they were looking for as quickly and
easily as possible, inventors came up with a number of new technologies that
could enhance reference books. In The Home Library, Arthur Penn (whose real
name was James Brander Matthews), recommended that readers take their
Webster’s Dictionary (improved with Denison’s Index as mentioned in chapter
two), and mount it on a dictionary-holder. The chief benefit of the dictionary-
holder, according to Penn, was that it made it “easy to carry from room to room,
and easy to consult, as it needs no substantial table to support it.”
107
A number of
different dictionary-holders were sold during the late nineteenth century.
Perhaps the best-known was the Noyes Dictionary-Holder, which was made by
La Verne W. Noyes in Chicago. It was designed to fit Webster’s American
Dictionary from 1864, and Worcester’s Dictionary from 1860 and was made from
steel wire. The Noyes Dictionary-Holder was advertised as a solution to the

105
Hours at Home; A Popular Monthly of Instruction and Recreation, September 1867, 443.
106
Scribner’s Monthly, January 1881, 473.
107
Arthur Penn, The Home Library (New York: D. Appleton, 1883), 16.

172
“unwieldy unabridged,” making it easier for readers to keep their dictionaries
opened or closed. They also claimed that it helped preserve the dictionary,
ostensibly by ensuring that there was less handling of the book, as all you had to
do was flip the page.
108
Noyes received a patent for his invention in 1899.
109
While
Noyes may have been the first, other dictionary-holders also came on the market.
The Holloway Co. of Ohio combined the idea of a dictionary holder with a book
stand, lamp rest, and table board.
110

For the other books of reference, especially encyclopedias, Penn
recommended Patterson’s “Easy-Reference Book-Stand,” which held two rows of
encyclopedias, and had a special shelf on the bottom specifically for Webster’s
American Dictionary. Because the dictionary was so bulky, the shelf was designed
so that the dictionary would lie on its side. Another favorite apparatus of Penn’s
for storing books was the Danner Revolving Book-Case. The Revolving Book-
Case held almost fifty volumes, was able to rotate three hundred and sixty
degrees, and was mounted on casters so it could be moved easily.
111
Some of
these revolving bookcases were designed to fit specific reference books.
Holloway’s Revolving Bookcase was made to hold the seventeen volumes of
Lippincott’s Chamber’s Encyclopedia.
112
Johnson’s Revolving Book-Case was
designed to hold a set of Appleton’s American Cyclopaedia.
113

The prominence with which reference books came to be identified as
essential objects for the home can also be seen in some of the scrapbook houses
that were created during the late nineteenth century. These albums were

108
American Bookseller, August 16, 1880.
109
Application filed August 22, 1898, patent granted March 21, 1899.
110
Belford’s Monthly and Democratic Review, December 1891, 24.
111
Penn, 53-55.
112
Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, January 1887, 31.
113
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, June 1880, 5.

173
primarily made by young middle-class girls. Using images from magazines,
trade cards, and newspapers, young women fashioned their ideal house.
114
The
cover of the album would usually feature a door, and then each successive page
(or pair of pages) would function as one room in the house.
115
One such album
from the 1880s, now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features a lively
parlor scene. In the middle of the room, placed on a table, are several reference
books.
116
Another unidentified album from 1870s, possibly from Worcester,
Massachusetts and now at the Winterthur Library, features an entire scene which
is filled with books. The creator placed Webster’s Common School Dictionary on a
chaise lounge, where is would be of ready reference to any family member.
117

Nineteenth-century readers used and appreciated reference books in
many different ways. For some, reference books were important tools of self-
education. For others, owning a reference book was a way to display their
culture and learnedness. Increasingly, however, readers looked to reference
books to help them find specific pieces of information, as quickly as possible.
These were not books to be read continuously, but valuable storehouses of
information that could be turned to whenever the need arose.

114
Beverly Gordon, “Scrapbook Houses for Paper Dolls: Creative Expression, Aesthetic
Elaboration, and Bonding in the Female World,” in The Scrapbook in American Life, ed. Susan
Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia P. Buckler (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 116-
134.
115
Jessie E. Ringwalt, “Fun For the Fireside: A Help to Mothers. The Paper-doll’s
House—No 20,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, August 1880, 160-162.
116
Untitled Collage, 1880-1890, Unidentified Artist, Smithsonian American Art Museum,
1992.11.3. Thanks to John M. Carrera for sharing this source with me.
117
Collage Album/Scrapbook House, Folio 144, c. 1870-1879, p. 5, Joseph Downs
Collection of Manuscripts & Printed Ephemera, The Winterthur Library,
http://content.winterthur.org:2011/cdm/compoundobject/collection/collage/id/96.

174
Conclusion

It was no mere coincidence that the People’s Cyclopedia of Universal
Knowledge (1883), compiled by William Harrison De Puy, and the People’s
Dictionary and Every-day Encyclopedia (1883), compiled by William Ralston Balch,
were both published in the late nineteenth century. As this dissertation has
shown, between 1840 and 1880, the reference book became, in effect, “the
people’s book.” Where as early nineteenth-century dictionaries and
encyclopedias were, for the most part, literary works designed for a learned
audience, by the late nineteenth century, these books had embraced popular
culture and a wide readership. This process eventually led to a more widespread
distribution of informational authority than earlier reference books had intended.
The key agents of change in this transformation were American publishers, who
saw the potential for a mass market for books of reference before such a market
even existed. At the same time, their efforts were made possible by a number of
important changes in American society during this period, including
technological advances, improvements in transportation, and the expansion of
schooling.
Early compilers, like Noah Webster, Joseph Worcester, and Francis Lieber,
were polymaths whose books reflected years of intense study. These dictionaries
and encyclopedias were repositories of accumulated wisdom designed to
educate the reader. Beginning in the 1840s, however, publishers became more
involved in the production process for reference books. Instead of relying on one
all-knowing compiler, they began to hire large staffs of specialists to efficiently
complete these projects. There is no better illustration of this shift than in the

175
titles of the works themselves. Alongside Webster’s and Worcester’s came books
like Zell’s Encyclopedia (published by T. Ellwood Zell from 1870-1871), Johnson’s
Cyclopaedia (published by A.J. Johnson from 1874-1877), and the Century
Dictionary (published by the Century Company from 1889-1891).
As publishers came to manage the compiling process, they were also able
to dictate what went into these dictionaries and encyclopedias. Firms like G. & C.
Merriam and D. Appleton & Co. implemented numerous changes to their books’
content and format in order to compete successfully with their rivals. Publishers
produced books in a variety of sizes and prices suitable for every different kind
of reader. They trumpeted their books as up-to-date, comprehensive, objective,
and reliable. Sometimes these claims were truthful, other times they were simply
a marketing gimmick. They also made dictionaries and encyclopedias more
entertaining and easier to use by adding new features like illustrations and
indexes.
Producing these reference books was expensive, and in order for their
investments to pay off, publishers knew that they had to move a lot of books.
Although the American population was expanding during the nineteenth
century, it was also increasingly dispersed. Publishers tackled this challenge by
relying on an army of book agents to sell dictionaries and encyclopedias first to
schools and then to families in cities and towns across the United States. Selling
reference books by subscription also made these books more affordable, as
readers could purchase them on an installment plan instead of having to pay the
entire cost up front.
Readers, for their part, welcomed the flood of dictionaries and
encyclopedias in the same way they welcomed other forms of popular education,

176
such as libraries, museums, fairs and exhibitions. Rather than being
overwhelmed by information, as recent scholarship has claimed, most were
desirous to learn more about language, literature, history, politics, geography,
technology, and science. Reference books enabled readers to ask questions about
the world and to answer them, quickly and easily, from the comfort of their own
home.
Of course, this increased distribution of authority throughout American
culture was severely circumscribed by a number of different factors. The
abbreviated pieces of information that readers gained access to through
dictionaries and encyclopedias were certainly not a substitute for more intense,
in-depth study. Reference books offered Americans a quick and superficial
replacement for expertise, but not actual expertise. Ultimately, the proliferation
of dictionaries and encyclopedias proved that no one, whether a farmer, a
lawyer, or a scholar, could learn everything there was to know. By the late
nineteenth century, broad intellectual authority was increasingly impossible.

177

Epilogue

In 1967, encyclopedia publisher Edward J. McCabe, Jr. told an audience at
the New York Public Library that America “was in the midst of a revolution in
educational technology and information science” and “in the whole area of
communicating knowledge.” He continued, “Information does not necessarily
have to go through a printing press and on to the pages of a book between covers
if more direct contact between information source and information inquirer can
be opened.”
1
McCabe’s vision of the future is now a reality, and Americans no
longer have to rely on a printed reference book for the answers to their questions.
As a result of this shift, printed reference works are today most likely to be
found gathering dust on the shelves of used bookstores. The Encyclopaedia
Britannica published its last print version in 2010.
2
Unless there is significant
demand, the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will not be printed.
3

Macmillian Education announced in late 2012 that they would stop selling all
print editions of their dictionaries.
4
Yet reference works are not in danger of
disappearing. Although the format has changed, dictionaries and encyclopedias
are just as embedded in our twenty-first century lives as they became in the
nineteenth. They simply take up less space on bookshelves.

1
Edward J. McCabe, Jr., “Subscription Books and the Knowledge Explosion” (New York:
The New York Public Library, 1967), 19.
2
Julie Bosman, “Britannica Is Reduced to a Click,” New York Times, March 14, 2012. A
printed version of the World Book encyclopedia continues to be sold.
3
“RIP for OED as world’s finest dictionary goes out of print,” Telegraph, April 20, 2014;
“Oxford Dictionary 3
rd
Edition.com?,” New York Times, August 31, 2010.
4
Michael Rundell, “Stop the presses—the end of the printed dictionary,” Macmillan
Dictionary Blog, November 5, 2012, accessed December 1, 2013,
http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/bye-print-dictionary.

178
The first digital version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was created for
LexisNexis in 1981. A CD-ROM version of the Oxford English Dictionary was
published in 1992. Just a year later, Microsoft published its own encyclopedia
and dictionary, Encarta (the original text of which was based on Funk and
Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia), on CD-ROM.
5
CDs were soon made obsolete by the
Internet, but reference books adapted yet again. In 1994, Britannica became the
first encyclopedia published online. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
went online in 1996. By the late 1990s, reference work publishers began to see the
benefits that came from putting their content online, either for free or for a fee.
6

The Oxford English Dictionary Online debuted in 2000.
In addition to having stand-alone websites, dictionaries in particular have
become embedded into the digital tools we use and rely on every day. Whether
you are using spell check before sending an e-mail, or clicking on an unfamiliar
word while reading an e-book, you are relying on a dictionary. Indeed, reference
book publishers have found that licensing their product to various digital
platforms is a big business. Amazon’s Kindle, for example, comes with Oxford’s
New Oxford American Dictionary.
7
Readers can also download apps for specific
reference works right on their phones, for free.
Without a doubt the most popular digital reference work today is
Wikipedia.
8
Launched in 2001, this crowd-sourced encyclopedia reaches a huge
audience (depending upon the source, it is the fifth or sixth most visited website

5
Microsoft stopped selling Encarta in 2009. See Randall Stross, “Encyclopedic
Knowledge, Then vs. Now,” New York Times, May 2, 2009.
6
David D. Kirkpatrick, “Dictionary Publishers Going Digital,” New York Times, August
21, 2000.
7
Jennifer Howard, “In a Digital Era, Our Dictionaries Read Us,” Chronicle of Higher
Education, March 11, 2013.
8
Wikipedia’s only real competitor is the digital version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
which charges $69.95 for a year-long subscription.

179
in the world). Wikipedia was founded by Jimmy Wales, an internet entrepreneur,
and Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. Wales had grown up reading his family’s
World Book encyclopedias, and so he conceived of the idea of an online
encyclopedia that anyone could edit. Before they started Wikipedia, however, the
two men began work on a similar project, called Nupedia. Nupedia was also a
free encyclopedia, but with articles written by experts. In 2000, a small group of
Ph.D. students volunteered to be on the Nupedia Advisory Board. Together, they
came up with a seven-step editorial process that would ensure that Nupedia was
reliable and free of bias. Sanger, himself an academic, strongly believed that in
order for the project to succeed, it had to be overseen by experts. But perhaps
because of the lengthy review process, Nupedia grew slowly. After its first year,
it had only produced a handful of articles.
9

Wikipedia was originally envisioned as a way to draw traffic back to
Nupedia, but the site took off in a way neither of the men expected. Over 20,000
articles were written during Wikipedia’s first year. A number of contributors to
Nupedia also ended up writing articles for Wikipedia. Before long, Wales
decided to pull funding from Nupedia and instead focus solely on Wikipedia.
Like most American reference work projects, Wikipedia was supposed to be a
business first and foremost—Wales thought he could monetize the website in
some way. Early contributors to Wikipedia, however, were not keen on the idea
of paid advertising. The burst of the internet bubble also meant that there were
few investors willing to support the site. So Wales decided to turn the company
into a non-profit, the Wikimedia Foundation. He then re-invented himself as a

9
Larry Sanger, “The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir,” Slashdot,
April 20, 2005, accessed December 1, 2013, http://beta.slashdot.org/story/56499.

180
humanitarian and activist who today makes money giving speeches around the
world about how knowledge should be free and accessible to all.
10

Both critics and supporters of Wikipedia like to point out how different it
is from reference works of the past. And Wikipedia does have important
innovations. First and most importantly, it’s free. It’s also bigger and more
comprehensive. Entries can be updated in real time, and the networked nature of
the web allows Wikipedia to link readers directly to the sources mentioned in
articles. On the other hand, in many fundamental ways, Wikipedia is not so
different from the industrialized reference books of the late nineteenth century.
Wikipedia is most well-known for the fact that any individual who wants to set
up an account, regardless of their background, can make changes or additions to
articles. No special credentials are needed. Research has shown, however, that
few people actually participate in the project. According to one report, the
number of active editors is steadily dropping, from a high of 51,000 in 2007 to
just 31,000 in 2013.
11
Among these contributors, there is a marked lack of
diversity: Wikipedians tend to be educated men.
12
In addition, since its humble
beginnings, Wikipedia has come to realize the value of authority. What Larry
Sanger once described as “the good-natured anarchy” that characterized
Wikipedia’s early years has been replaced by a large bureaucracy of
administrators, autopatrollers, ombudsmen and other volunteers who work to
limit bad edits and prevent vandalism.
13

10
Amy Chozick, “Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire,” New York Times, June 27,
2013.
11
Tom Simonite, “The Decline of Wikipedia: Even As More People Than Ever Rely on It,
Fewer People Create It,” MIT Technology Review, October 22, 2013.
12
Noam Cohen, “Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List,” New York
Times, January 30, 2011.
13
Sanger, “The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir.”

181
Furthermore, the actual work of editing Wikipedia is similar to the
factory-style production of late nineteenth-century reference books, with each
person working to contribute a small piece to the larger project. This work is, for
the most part, anonymous. While editors are encouraged to create screen names,
a significant percentage of editors do not do so, preferring only to be identified
by their IP address. When readers go to different articles there is no immediate
indication of who wrote it. Readers must click on the talk page to see all the
various people who have edited the article over time. In addition, the production
of Wikipedia reflects the continuing evolution of American capitalism: like so
many industries today, much of the editing work, especially when it comes the
non-English versions of the encyclopedia, is automated. Wikipedia uses bots to
complete a range of editing tasks, from creating entire pages to erasing the work
of vandals. While Wikipedia is often lauded for its transparency, many readers of
Wikipedia have no idea that bots are doing a significant amount of work behind
the scenes. Indeed, it is only recently that people have started tracking the
activities of these bots.
14

Over the years, Wikipedia has taken significant steps to improve its
articles, but it has yet to achieve a reputation as a source for high-quality, reliable
information. Despite a famous 2005 study in the British journal Nature, which
found that Wikipedia entries have a similar number of errors to Encyclopedia
Britannica articles, the debate over Wikipedia’s trustworthiness rages on.
15
Most

14
On bots and Wikipedia, see “The Shadowy World of Wikipedia’s Editing Bots,” MIT
Technology Review, February 13, 2014; Jesse Hicks, “This Machine Kills Trolls: How Wikipedia’s
Robots and Cyborgs Snuff Out Vandalism,” Verge, February 18, 2014, accessed February 20, 2014,
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/18/5412636/this-machine-kills-trolls-how-wikipedia-robots-
snuff-out-vandalism.
15
“Special Report: Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head,” Nature 438 (December 15,
2005): 900-901.

182
recently, Wikipedia has been dealing with the problem of undisclosed paid
editing, where in public relations firms and others edit the Wikipedia pages of
corporations and individuals to make them seem more positive. In order to
combat this issue, Wikipedia will now require all users who are paid to edit to
disclose their affiliation.
16
Whether this policy will solve the problem remains to
be seen. Some attempts have been made to help readers who are trying to assess
the credibility of certain Wikipedia articles. Researchers at the University of
California, Santa Cruz developed a tool called WikiTrust in 2009, which color-
codes various sentences in Wikipedia articles based on their reliability.
Reliability is determined using an algorithm that looks at how often a page has
been edited as well as the reputation of the page’s author.
17
In 2012, two
researchers at the University College Dublin in Ireland came up with another
algorithm that promises to rate the trustworthiness of Wikipedia pages. They
also do this by considering the authority of the main author, which they gauge
primarily by the number of articles written and contributed to.
18

In many respects, Wikipedia has revolutionized the reference genre. At
the same time, however, as this dissertation has shown, the world’s largest free
online encyclopedia represents less of a break from the past and more of an
evolution. Through the mass-production of dictionaries and encyclopedias,
nineteenth century publishers took specialized information on language, history,
politics, literature, science, technology, and more, and helped spread it widely

16
Geoff Brigham, “Making a Change to Our Terms of Use: Requirements for Disclosure,”
Wikimedia Blog, June 16, 2014, accessed June 16, 2014,
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/06/16/change-terms-of-use-requirements-for-disclosure/.
17
Erica Naone, “Adding Trust to Wikipedia, and Beyond,” MIT Technology Review,
September 4, 2009.
18
Xiangju Qin and Pádraig Cunningham, “Assessing the Quality of Wikipedia Pages
Using Edit Longevity and Contributor Centrality,” The 23rd Irish Conference on Artificial
Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2012): 3-11.

183
throughout the United States. The popularization of information then helped
make possible the democratization of information we enjoy today.

184
Appendix

Publishing History of the Dictionaries of Joseph E. Worcester in America*

1830
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins)

1831
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little and Wilkins; New York: Collins and Hannay)

1832
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Burlington, Vermont: Chauncey Goodrich)

1835
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Hilliard, Gray) [revised edition]
An Elementary Dictionary for Common Schools (Boston: Hilliard, Gray;
Philadelphia: DeSilver, Thomas)

1838
An Elementary Dictionary for Common Schools (Boston: G.W. Palmer)

1839
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks and Palmer)

1840
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks and Palmer; Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait)

1841
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks and Palmer)

1843
An Elementary Dictionary for Common Schools (Boston: Jenks and Palmer)
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks and Palmer)

1846
A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language: to which are added
Walker’s Key (Boston: Wilkins, Carter)
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks and Palmer) [revised]

1847

185
A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language: to which are added
Walker’s Key (Boston: Wilkins, Carter)
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Langauge
(Boston: Jenks, Palmer)

1848
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks, Palmer) [revised]

1849
A Universal and Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston:
Jenks, Palmer)

1850
An Elementary Dictionary for Common Schools (Boston: Jenks, Palmer) [revised]
A Universal and Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston:
Jenks, Palmer)
A Primary Pronouncing Dictionary (Boston: Jenks, Palmer)
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks, Palmer)

1851
A Universal and Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston:
Jenks, Palmer)
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks, Hickling, & Swan)
A Primary Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Jenks, Hickling,
& Swan)

1852
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks, Hickling, & Swan)
A Primary Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Jenks, Hickling,
& Swan)
An Elementary Dictionary for Common Schools (Boston: Jenks, Hickling & Swan)

1853
A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Jenks, Hickling & Swan)
An Elementary Dictionary for Common Schools (Boston: Jenks, Hickling & Swan)

1855
A Pronouncing, Explanatory and Synonymous Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Hickling, Swan & Brown)
Academic Dictionary (Boston: Hickling, Swan & Brown?)

1856
A Pronouncing, Explanatory and Synonymous Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Hickling, Swan & Brown)

186

1857
A Primary Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Hickling, Swan
& Brown) [revised]

1859
An Elementary Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Swan, Brewer &
Tileston) [revised]

1860
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Swan, Brewer and
Tileston; Cleveland: Ingham & Bragg) [revised]
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Hickling, Swan, and Brewer)
A Primary Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Swan, Brewer &
Tileston, 1860)
A Comprehensive Dictionary (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)
An Elementary Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Swan, Brewer &
Tileston)

1861
A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Swan, Brewer &
Tileston)
A Primary Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Swan, Brewer &
Tileston) [revised]
An Elementary Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Swan, Brewer &
Tileston) [revised]

1863
A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer &
Tileston; Cleveland: Ingham & Bragg)
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer & Tileston; Cleveland:
Ingham & Bragg)
A Pronouncing, Explanatory and Synonymous Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Brewer & Tileston)

1864
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer and Tileston)

1867
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer and Tileston)

1870
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer and Tileston)

1871
A Primary Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer and
Tileston)
A Primary Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

187
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer & Tileston;
New York: J.W. Schermerhorn)
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1872
A Pocket Dictionary of the English Language, ed. Loomis J. Campbell (Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott)

1873
A Primary Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer and Tileston)
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer & Tileston;
N.Y., J.W. Schermerhorn)
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer and Tileston)
A Comprehensive Dictionary (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1874
A Universal and Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1875
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer and Tileston)

1876
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer & Tileston)

1877
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer & Tileston)
A Pocket Dictionary of the English Language, ed. Loomis J. Campbell (Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott)

1879
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer & Tileston)

1880
A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Brewer & Tileston)

1881
A Dictionary of the English Language, with Supplement (London and Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott)
A Universal and Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language, with
Supplement (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1882
A Dictionary of the English Language, with Supplement (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott)

1883
A Dictionary of the English Language, with Supplement (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott)

188
A New School Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1887
A Dictionary of the English Language, with Supplement (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott)

1888
Worcester’s Academic Dictionary: A New Etymological Dictionary of the English
Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1889
A Dictionary of the English Language, with Supplement (Philadelphia and London:
J.B. Lippincott)

1890
A Dictionary of the English Language, with Supplement (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott)

1897
A Dictionary of the English Language, with Supplement (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott)

1902
A New Primary Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1904
A Pocket Dictionary of the English Language, ed. Loomis J. Campbell (Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott)

1907
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1908
A New School Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)
A Dictionary of the English Language, with Supplement (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott)
New Academic Dictionary (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott) [revised]

1910
Lippincott’s Business and Office Dictionary (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)
Lippincott’s Handy Dictionary (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1911
A New School Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1914
Pocket Dictionary of the English Language, ed. Loomis J. Campbell (Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott)

189
A New School Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)
A New Primary Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1919
Pocket Dictionary of the English Language, ed. Loomis J. Campbell (Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott)

1920
A New Primary Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)
A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)
[revised]
A New School Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott)

1921
A New Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott)

*This list was compiled using library records from the online database WorldCat,
as well as Arthur G. Kennedy, A Bibliography of Writings on the English Language,
from the Beginning of Printing to the End of 1922 (New York: Hafner Publishing,
1961). It does not include Worcester’s abridgements of other dictionaries,
including his 1828 abridgement of Samuel Johnson and his 1829 abridgement of
Noah Webster. It is almost certainly incomplete.

190

Bibliography

Manuscript Repositories

American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts
Broadsides Collection

Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
G. & C. Merriam Company Archive

Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts
Charles Folsom Papers

Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts
Henry W. Haynes Papers
Joseph E. Worcester Papers
Lamb Family Papers

New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts
Helen M. Warner Diary

New York Public Library, New York, New York
William G. Webster Papers

Private Collection of Madeline Kripke, New York, New York

Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
Zinman Collection of Canvassing Books

Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Swanton Family Papers
Dana Family Papers
Loring Family Papers

Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Lewis W. Fairchild Papers

Vermont Historical Society, Barre, Vermont
Charles Morris Cobb Diaries
Clement Family Papers

Winterthur Library, Wilmington, Delaware
Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts & Printed Ephemera

Newspapers and Magazines

191
The Advance (Chicago)
The Albion, a Journal of News, Politics and Literature (New York)
The American Bookseller (New York)
The American Educational Monthly (New York)
American Phrenological Journal (New York)
The American Stationer
Appletons’ Journal of Literature, Science, and Art (New York)
The Atlantic Monthly (Boston)
Belford’s Monthly and Democratic Review (Chicago)
The Boston Daily Advertiser
The Boston Daily Globe
Century Illustrated Magazine (New York)
The Chautauquan (Meadville, PA)
Christian Advocate (Chicago)
Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany (Boston; New York)
Christian Union (New York)
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Congregationalist (Boston)
The Connecticut Common School Journal (Hartford)
The Critic (New York)
The Cultivator & Country Gentleman (Albany, NY)
Current Literature (New York)
The Daily News (Denver)
The Dakota Republican
The Dallas Weekly Herald
The Dial (Chicago)
The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature (New York; Philadelphia)
The Educational Weekly
The Farmers Cabinet (Philadelphia)
The Friend (Philadelphia)
Friends’ Intelligencer (Philadelphia)
Friends’ Review (Philadelphia)
The Galaxy (New York)
Godey’s Lady’s Book (New York)
The Golden Rule (Boston)
The Granite Monthly (Dover, NH)
Harper’s Weekly (New York)
Harper’s Bazaar (New York)
Hours at Home (New York)
The Ladies’ Home Journal (Philadelphia)
Lakeside Monthly (Chicago)
Library Journal
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine (Philadelphia)
The Literary World (Boston)
The Lynchburg Virginian (Lynchburg, VA)
Macon Weekly Telegraph (Macon, GA)
Maine Farmer (Augusta, ME)
Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture (Boston)
Massachusetts Teacher and Journal of Home and School Education (Boston)

192
Merry’s Museum and Parley’s Magazine (Boston)
The Methodist Review (New York)
National Repository (New York)
New Englander (New Haven, CT)
New York Evangelist
New York Herald
New York Observer and Chronicle
The New York Times
New York Tribune
New York World
Ohio Farmer (Cleveland)
The Ohio Journal of Education
Old and New (New York)
Oliver Optic’s Magazine (Boston)
Outlook (New York)
Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine (San Francisco)
The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
The Philadelphia Photographer
The Photographic Times and American Photographer (New York)
Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics (Portsmouth, NH)
The Printer and Bookmaker (New York)
The Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston)
The Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston)
The Publishers’ Circular (London)
Publishers’ Weekly (New York)
Puck (New York)
Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia)
Scientific American (New York)
Scribner’s Monthly (New York)
The Southern and Western Literary Messenger and Review (Richmond, VA)
Stoddart’s Review (Philadelphia)
The Wall Street Journal
Western Christian Advocate (Cincinnati)
The Worcester Palladium (Worcester, MA)
The Youth’s Companion (Boston)

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Asset Metadata

Creator Johnson, Ann Katherine (author)

Core Title The people's book: making, selling, and reading reference works in nineteenth-century America

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publication Date 07/07/2014

Defense Date 05/07/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag dictionaries,encyclopedias,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Halttunen, Karen (committee chair), Ethington, Philip J. (committee member), Gross, Robert A. (committee member), Gustafson, Thomas (committee member)

Creator Email anniekj@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-432558

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Legacy Identifier etd-JohnsonAnn-2619.pdf

Dmrecord 432558

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Johnson, Ann Katherine

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