Editing Webster's Dictionary (section)

=== Influence ===
Lepore (2008) demonstrates Webster's innovative ideas about language and politics and shows why Webster's endeavors were at first so poorly received. Culturally conservative [[Federalist Party|Federalists]] denounced the work as radical{{snd}}too inclusive in its lexicon and even bordering on vulgar. Meanwhile, Webster's old foes, the [[Democratic-Republican Party|Jeffersonian Republicans]], attacked the man, labeling him mad for such an undertaking.<ref>Jill Lepore, "Introduction" in Arthur Schulman, ''Websterisms: A Collection of Words and Definitions Set Forth by the Founding Father of American English'' (Free Press, 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 | last1 = Deppman | first1 = Jed | year = 2002 | title = 'I Could Not Have Defined the Change': Rereading Dickinson's Definition Poetry | journal = Emily Dickinson Journal | volume = 11 | issue = 1| 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>

Austin (2005) explores the intersection of lexicographical and poetic practices in American literature, and attempts to map out a "lexical poetics" using Webster's dictionaries. He shows the ways in which American poetry has inherited Webster and drawn upon his lexicography to reinvent it. Austin explicates key definitions from both the ''Compendious'' (1806), and ''American'' (1828) dictionaries and brings into its discourse a range of concerns including the politics of American English, the question of national identity and culture in the early moments of American independence, and the poetics of citation and of definition.{{Full citation needed|date=December 2022}}

Webster's dictionaries were a redefinition of Americanism within the context of an emergent and unstable American socio-political and cultural identity. Webster's identification of his project as a "federal language" shows his competing impulses towards regularity and innovation in historical terms. Perhaps the contradictions of Webster's project represented a part of a larger dialectical play between liberty and order within Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary political debates.<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>