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Spelling Wars! Broadsides Criticize Orthography in Webster's Dictionary and Cobb's Spelling Book
Spelling Wars! Broadsides Criticize Orthography in Webster's Dictionary and Cobb's Spelling Book
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Spelling Wars! Broadsides Criticize Orthography in Webster's Dictionary and Cobb's Spelling Book

This fascinating pair of broadsides carry the dictionary and spelling book war between Noah Webster and Lyman Cobb to the public and to schools across the country. Each broadside points out the "contradictions" and "inconsistencies" in the other person's work. Four decades younger than Webster, Cobb had been a teacher in western New York when he issued his first spelling book in 1821, but he became one of Webster's main competitors, and Webster's family continued to battle Cobb's influence in schools and among educators after Webster's death in 1843.

[NOAH WEBSTER.] Lyman Cobb, Printed Broadside, Contradictions in the Orthography of Dr. Webster's Dictionaries, ca. 1844. 1 p., 12" x 18.75". Expected folds; contemporary ink emendations and strikethroughs; two ink stains in margins; loss at lower right corner, not affecting text.
With: [LYMAN COBB.] Printed Broadside, Inconsistencies in the Orthography & Orthoepy of Cobb's New Spelling Book, n.d. [1844?]. 1 p., 17.5" x 23.5". Expected folds; several water stains.

Excerpts
[Anti-Webster:]
"Dr. Webster's Innovations in Orthography"
[followed by three columns of sixty-six words each]

"Contradictions in the Orthography of Dr. Webster's Dictionaries"
[followed by two sets of three columns comparing the Royal Octavo, School, and Octavo editions of Webster's dictionaries]

"Many words are also spelled, differently with the same, or nearly the same definition, as Enlist and Inlist, Enlistment and Inlistment, Engulf and Ingulf, Entomb and Intomb, Entwist and Intwist, Entwine and Intwine, &c. &c. Many words are also spelled differently in the Elementary Spelling Book from the School Dictionary, as Opaque, Mosque, Ouse, &c."

"Contradictions in the Division of Syllables"
[followed by three columns comparing the Royal Octavo, School, and Octavo editions of Webster's dictionaries]

"[Pages 308 and 309, commencing with Escape, Octavo, there are at one opening, nineteen differences in division!]"

[Anti-Cobb:]
"The following words will exhibit a few of the many discrepancies existing in the orthography between Cobb's New Spelling Book, published in 1842, and Cobb's Walker, published in 1841."
[followed by two columns comparing seventy words from the two editions]

"The following words are specimens of the inconsistencies existing in the orthography of Cobb's New Spelling Book."

"Examples of the Syllabication in Cobb's New Spelling Book, which are contrary to Webster, Walker, Johnson, or even Cobb's Walker."

"Mr. Cobb, in the preface to his New Spelling Book, has the following remark:
"‘In the classification of the different spelling lessons of this work, great pains have been taken so to arrange the several lessons that the scholar will be led on gradually from easy to difficult spelling, in strict accordance with his natural progress and expanding capacities.'
"The following examples of Classification and Arrangement will show that either Mr. Cobb is utterly unacquainted to judge of the ‘expanding capacities' of children, or he has not carried out in practice what he adopts in theory."

"This Spelling Book is divided into 6 Parts, 62 Chapters, 145 Sections, 363 Lessons, 654 Subdivisions, making in all more than 1,200 Divisions and Subdivisions, which would require more time of the Scholar to learn all the peculiarities and multiform variations, than to acquaint himself with the Orthography of the entire language!!"

Historical Background
The New Jersey Association of Teachers and Friends of Education convened in Newark on March 1-2, 1844. A general debate arose over Noah Webster's dictionary. Professor William Chauncey Fowler (1793-1881) of Amherst, one of Webster's sons-in-law, told the association of the "herculean labors and unsurpassed experience of Dr. Webster—shewed how the language had progressed within a century past—contended that Webster had done a great service, and that the country was with him."

Next, Lyman Cobb "entered into a close examination of the dictionary to show its incongruities—that Webster did not follow Webster. He exhibited several hundred contradictions, and a sheet containing several columns was exhibited to shew its innovations and inconsistencies with itself" [likely, this broadside].

After further discussion, the Association voted 32 to 20 in favor of recommending Webster's small Common School Dictionary. That evening, the Association tied over a motion to adopt Cobb's New Spelling Book instead of Webster's Elementary Spelling Book. The following morning, the Association voted to postpone further consideration of the spelling books until the next quarterly meeting. Later in the day, a member "submitted a minority report (in the nature of a protest,) against the recommendation of Webster's Dictionary. After an exciting debate, a motion was carried that it be entered on the minutes" and a committee of the majority was appointed to prepare an answer.

Noah Webster (1758-1843) was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale College in 1778. He was admitted to the bar in 1781 but could find no work as a lawyer. He received a master's degree from Yale and began teaching at schools in western Connecticut and then Goshen, New York. He wrote and published a speller (1783), a grammar book (1784), and a reader (1785) for elementary schools. In 1789, he married Rebecca Greenleaf (1766-1847) in New Haven, and they had eight children. In 1793, with a loan from Alexander Hamilton, Webster moved to New York City, where he founded the Federalist newspaper American Minerva and edited it for four years. He also published the semi-weekly publication The Herald, A Gazette for the Country. He defended the administrations of George Washington and John Adams, earning the ire of the Jeffersonian Republicans. After returning to New Haven in 1798, he served in the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1800 and 1802-1807. In 1812, he moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, where he lived for a decade and helped to found Amherst College. Webster published his first dictionary in 1806 but began the following year to compile an expanded and comprehensive dictionary. The proceeds from the sale of his popular blue-backed speller allowed him to spend many years working on the dictionary. His famed An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) provided an intellectual foundation for American nationalism, seeing the new nation as superior to the old empires of antiquity and contemporary Europe. He published an expanded second edition in two volumes in 1840.

Lyman Cobb (1800-1864) was born in Massachusetts and became a teacher in New York. He first published his spelling book, A Just Standard for Pronouncing the English Language, in 1821. It drew heavily on The Columbian Spelling-Book (1819) by Daniel Crandall in Cooperstown, New York. However, Cobb's book became a success and was the chief competitor to Noah Webster's spelling books from 1825 to 1845. Cobb sold about 4 million copies of his spelling book and revisions into the 1850s. He moved to New York City in the 1820s and published other school textbooks. In 1831, he gathered several articles he had written on Webster's orthography into a pamphlet entitled A Critical Review of the Orthography of Dr. Webster's Series of Books. He published Cobb's New Spelling Book, in Six Parts in 1842. He also became a leading opponent of corporal punishment in schools. Despite the success of his publications, he died in poverty in Pennsylvania.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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