The Dictionary Wars: The American Fight over the English Language

As new hardcover in similar dust jacket. Tan cloth with silver gilt title on spine. Clean text block. Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language. 358 pages with index.