Editing Noah Webster (section)

===Influence===
[[File:A Dictionary of the English Language Noah Webster title page.jpg|thumb|[[Title page]] of Webster's ''Dictionary of the English Language'', {{c.|1830–1840}}]]
Lepore (2008) illustrates Webster's paradoxical views on language and politics and explains why his work was initially poorly received. Culturally conservative Federalists denounced the work as radical—too inclusive in its lexicon and even bordering on vulgar. Meanwhile, Webster's old foes the Republicans attacked the man, labeling him mad for such an undertaking.<ref>{{cite book |first=Jill |last=Lepore |chapter=Introduction |editor-first=Arthur |editor-last=Schulman |title=Websterisms: A Collection of Words and Definitions Set Forth by the Founding Father of American English |publisher=Free Press |year=2008 }}</ref>

Scholars have long seen Webster's 1844 dictionary to be an important resource for reading poet [[Emily Dickinson]]'s life and work; she once commented that the "Lexicon" was her "only companion" for years. One biographer said, "The dictionary was no mere reference book to her; she read it as a priest his breviary—over and over, page by page, with utter absorption."<ref>{{cite journal |first=Jed |last=Deppman |title='I Could Not Have Defined the Change': Rereading Dickinson's Definition Poetry |journal=Emily Dickinson Journal |volume=11 |issue=1 |year=2002 |pages=49–80 |doi=10.1353/edj.2002.0005 |s2cid=170669035 }} Martha Dickinson Bianchi, ''The life and letters of Emily Dickinson'' (1924) p. 80 for quote</ref>

Nathan Austin has explored the intersection of lexicographical and poetic practices in American literature, and attempts to map out a "lexical poetics" using Webster's definitions as his base. Poets mined  his dictionaries, often drawing upon the lexicography in order to express word play. Austin explicates key definitions from both the ''Compendious'' (1806) and ''American'' (1828) dictionaries, and finds a range of themes such as the politics of "American" versus "British" English and issues of national identity and independent culture. Austin argues that Webster's dictionaries helped redefine Americanism in an era of highly flexible cultural identity. Webster himself saw the dictionaries as a nationalizing device to separate America from Britain, calling his project a "federal language", with competing forces towards regularity on the one hand and innovation on the other. Austin suggests that the contradictions of Webster's lexicography were part of a larger play between liberty and order within American intellectual discourse, with some pulled toward Europe and the past, and others pulled toward America and the new future.<ref>Nathan W. Austin, "Lost in the Maze of Words: Reading and Re-reading Noah Webster's Dictionaries", ''Dissertation Abstracts International'', 2005, Vol. 65 Issue 12, p. 4561</ref>

In 1850 [[Blackie and Son]] in Glasgow published the first general dictionary of English that relied heavily upon pictorial illustrations integrated with the text. Its ''The Imperial Dictionary, English, Technological, and Scientific, Adapted to the Present State of Literature, Science, and Art; On the Basis of Webster's English Dictionary'' used Webster's for most of their text, adding some additional technical words that went with illustrations of machinery.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Michael |last=Hancher |title=Gazing at the Imperial Dictionary |journal=Book History |volume=1 |year=1998 |pages=156–181 |doi=10.1353/bh.1998.0006 |s2cid=161573226 }}</ref>