A Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language by Webster, Noah - 1807

Paperback / softback. New.

paperback. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.

New.

paperback. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.

paperback. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.

paperback. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.

hardcover. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.

hardcover. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.

New Haven: Brisban & Brannan, 1807. First edition, 12mo, pp. 250; contemporary sheep, red morocco label on spine; front free endpaper wanting, some dampstaining, the whole rubbed and worn, but sound. One of Webster's most important works. His goal in publishing this grammar was to lay out the principles of the American language based on its own structure, discarding previous work and worn-out grammatical systems. "I have long expected that some English scholar would attempt to reduce these discoveries to practical use, by framing a system of rules to illustrate the construction of sentences, upon genuine principles of the language. Being hitherto disappointed, and seeing nothing issue from the press but new compilations of old rules, and fresh editions of the same errors; I have at length undertaken to construct a Grammar, upon what my own research into the ancient English, or Saxon language, with various and extensive readings in modern books, have proved, to my full satisfaction, to be its only… Read More

New Haven: Brisban & Brannan, 1807. First edition, 12mo, pp. 250, original full calf, gilt-paneled spine; light dampstaining to the upper gutter; all else very good and sound. Of this small grammar Webster wrote in an 1805 letter to the American publisher Mathew Carey: "I am compiling a Grammar upon what appear to be the true idioms & fundamental principles of the Language--which I hope to have ready for the press within a year..." Webster's goal was to lay out the principles of American English, based on its own structure, thereby discarding previous grammatical systems which served British English. In it he has developed "the real structure and idiom of our language. I have left Lowth and Johnson, and mounted to the original writers as far back as the first Saxon laws and annals. The result is that many of the principles of grammar as taught in Lowth formerly, and now in Murray (whose book is nothing but Lowth's altered and enlarged), prove to be totally false; and I affirm that those grammars now… Read More