Creator
Noah Webster
Title
An Improved Grammar of the English Language.
Coverage
New Haven
Publisher
Sidney Babcock
Date
1842
Subject
New ed.
Description
In 1842—58 years after his first English grammar (no. 23) and just a year before his death—the elderly Noah Webster issued this newly “improved” grammar. Although Lindley Murray had been dead for 16 years, Webster was still plagued by Murray’s popularity. All the British grammars were “very imperfect and . . . very erroneous.” He contradicted Murray whenever he could: “the contrary rule in Murray is egregiously wrong.” And he persisted in oddball views: “Grammars tell us, that is sometimes a conjunction. This is not true; it is always a pronoun.”