The people's book: making, selling, and reading reference works in nineteenth-century America

This dissertation traces the major changes in compiling, publishing, marketing, distributing, and using reference books in nineteenth‐century America. Focusing specifically on dictionaries and encyclopedias, I discuss a range of books, from Noah Webster’s famous American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) to George Ripley and Charles A. Dana’s less well‐known New American Cyclopaedia (1858-1863) to Isaac K. Funk’s Standard Dictionary (1893-1895). I show how, between 1840 and 1880, the reference book became, in effect, “the people’s book.” Where as early nineteenth‐century dictionaries and encyclopedias were, for the most part, literary works designed for an educated audience, by the late nineteenth century, these books had embraced popular culture and a wide readership. The key agents of change in this transformation were American publishers, who saw the potential for a mass market for books of reference before such a market even existed. At the same time, their efforts were made possible by a number of important developments in American society during this period, including technological advances, improvements in transportation, and the expansion of schooling. ❧ Drawing on letters, diaries, newspapers, magazines, canvassing books, as well as reference books, this dissertation reveals how dictionaries and encyclopedias can help us better understand larger trends in the history of American education. Yet it also challenges a historiography that argues that the creation and use of reference books was a response to “information overload.” My central historical claim is that reference books, originally designed to set standards from above by learned authorities, ultimately contributed to the shattering of that very authority by promoting the popularization of information.