Joseph Emerson Worcester

Joseph Emerson Worcester (1784–1865) was an American lexicographer and chief competitor of "Webster's Dictionary" in the mid-nineteenth-century.

Biography

Worcester was born August 24, 1784, in Bedford, New Hampshire, and worked on a farm in his youth, entering Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1805. In 1809, he entered Yale University and graduated in two years. He then taught school in Massachusetts for several years, during which time he produced several works on geography, including "A Geographical Dictionary, or Universal Gazetteer, Ancient and Modern" in 1817. He wrote a much used textbook, "Elements of History, Ancient and Modern, accompanied by an Historical Atlas", published in 1827.

Worcester's first edited dictionary was an abridgment of Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language", published in 1828, the same year Noah Webster's "American Dictionary" appeared. Having worked as an assistant on the production of Webster's dictionary, he produced an abridgment of Webster's work in 1829. Unlike Webster, he used London for his guide to pronunciation and opposed Webster's spelling reforms (e.g. "tuf" for "tough", "dawter" for "daughter"), to Webster's disapproval.

He published his own "Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory English Dictionary" in 1830, inciting charges of plagiarism from Webster, to which Worcester protested that he had worked on his dictionary before working for Webster and had used his own research. In what is often referred to as the "dictionary wars", rivalry and contention between the two men continued until Webster's death in 1843, and long after with Webster's successor, the G. & C. Merriam Company, which bought rights to the "American Dictionary".

Worcester collected plilological works and wrote a journal in Europe in 1831, and then for many years co-edited the annual "American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge". In 1841 he married Amy Elizabeth McKean, but the couple had no children. Around this time, Worcester was living in The Craigie House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, [Brooks, Van Wyck. "The Flowering of New England". New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1952: 153] renting rooms from the widow of Andrew Craigie, first apothecary general of the United States. He lived alongside Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with whom he became friends, until his own house was built nearby.

Worcester continued to revise his dictionary, producing "A Universal and Critical Dictionary" in 1846. When a British edition of the work stated that it was based on the work of Noah Webster, and omitted Worcester's introductory statement claiming otherwise, he responded with "A Gross Literary Fraud Exposed". He earned LL. D degrees from Brown University (1847) and Dartmouth College (1856).

His culminating work, "A Dictionary of the English Language", published in 1860 was briefly the major American dictionary, until "Merriam's" new edition of Webster's "American Dictionary" appeared in 1864. Worcester's work was the first American dictionary to incorporate illustrations throughout the text, and to offer treatment of synonyms, a feature of most major dictionaries since. It was posthumously revised in 1886, but was eclipsed by "Webster's International" and other dictionaries of the 1890s and went out of print before the turn of the century.

Worcester died October 27, 1865. He is interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Works

*"A Geographical Dictionary, or Universal Gazetteer, Ancient and Modern" (1817, enlarged 1823)

*"A Gazetteer of the United States" (1818)

*"Elements of Geography, Ancient and Modern" (1819)

*"Sketches of the Earth and its Inhabitants" (1823)
*"Elements of History, Ancient and Modern, accompanied by an Historical Atlas" (1826)

*"Epitome of History" (reissue of above, 1827)

*"Outlines of Scripture Geography" (1828)

*"Johnson's Dictionary, as improved by Todd and abridged by Chalmers, with Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary combined, to which is added Walker's Key" (1828)

*"A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language with Pronouncing Vocabularies" (1830)

*"A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language" (1846)

*"A Gross Literary Fraud exposed; relating to the Publication of Worcester's Dictionary in London: Together with Three Appendixes; Including the Answer of S. Converse to an Attack on him by Messrs. G. & C. Merriam" (1854)

*"A Dictionary of the English Language" (1860)

*"An Elementary Dictionary for the Common Schools with Pronouncing Vocabularies of Classical Scripture and Modern Geographical Names"

*"An Elementary Dictionary of the English Language"

*"A Primary Dictionary of the English Language"

References