Founding Grammars

by Rosemarie Ostler

  Until 1800, each edition of the grammar, exercises, and abridgment consisted of about 5,000 copies. Subsequent printings were about 15,000 copies each. By 1832, fifty-two editions had been printed in England, amounting to well over half a million volumes. Over the next few decades at least 3 million copies of Murray’s various language study books were printed and sold in England.16

  Murray was now deeply committed to his grammar writing. Just as Webster had pulled himself out of depression by writing the Grammatical Institute, Murray discovered that the mental engagement involved in writing language books cheered his spirits and improved his health. Eager to see his works distributed as widely as possible, he soon sold all the copyrights to Quaker booksellers in Yorkshire and London who had the capacity to produce large print runs and who would also advertise. Although Murray did not have radical ideas about grammar, in his own way he was just as passionate as Webster about the importance of the subject. He felt he was doing good by helping as many people as possible gain grammatical skills.

  Even after he sold the copyrights, Murray continued to be closely involved in the books’ production. He spent much of his time meticulously revising each new edition, as well as adding new material. By the 1824 edition English Grammar had grown from an original 222 pages to 310. He paid careful attention to comments and criticisms and tried to respond to them by correcting and rewording the relevant parts of the next edition. He explained to a friend, “By the change of a word, a slight variation in the form of a phrase, an additional sentence, or a short note, I have, as I think, frequently removed an objection or difficulty.”17 Murray always remained humble about his work and open to suggestions even after his books became bestsellers. Such humility was a rare trait in the contentious world of grammar book writing.

  Murray’s modesty didn’t prevent him from taking a businesslike interest in sales. Nor did the fact that he wasn’t keeping what he earned on the books. He was highly skilled at marketing and put a great deal of time into it. From his sitting room sofa, he sent many letters to booksellers inquiring about the number of copies of a given edition they still had on hand, when they expected to print a new edition, and whether they had any useful suggestions for improving the work before then. When he received positive reviews, he sent them to be inserted as “characters,” or advertisements, in later editions. He made sure that announcements of his other books were also included at the back of each book.

  One way to distribute his grammar books more widely was to introduce them to the country of his birth. He asked his brother John, a New York businessman, to take charge of American printing and sales. The first American edition of English Grammar was published in New York in 1800. Shortly afterward, publishers in Philadelphia and Boston also produced printings. As in England, both the textbook and the related volumes that followed were immediate hits. In 1800 alone, ten American editions appeared.

  By 1808 the grammar had been through twenty-five American editions and the abridgment through forty. This amounted to around three-quarters of a million books in circulation, in a country with only a little over 7 million people. From 1800 until 1840, when sales gradually began to decline, Americans would purchase as many as 12 million copies of Murray’s various grammar and reading books. He was even more popular in the United States than in England.

  No doubt part of the reason for his booming sales was the lack of international copyright laws. American printers didn’t pay royalties to British authors, so printing Murray’s books was financially attractive. It was also easy to crank out pirated editions, and dozens appeared on the market.

  Another reason for the book’s remarkable success is surely Murray’s genius for promotion. He collected positive English reviews and sent them to his brother John to use in American advertising, along with copious instructions about where they should appear. After quoting from one review of his speller, he tells his brother, “This character [advertisement], besides being circulated in the papers and periodical works, should be printed at the end or front of the American editions.” He also asked his brother to keep him informed of any positive American reviews so he could use them in England.18

  Murray made sure that readers were aware of the various improvements that came with each edition. For example, in the 1797 edition of the exercise book, he explains in a notice at the front of the book that he “has felt it incumbent upon him to give the seventh edition every improvement in his power, without enhancing the price of the book.” Among the changes are “expunging some obscure and uninteresting sentences, inserting a number of examples adapted to the latest improvements in the grammar; and adding to the Syntax many useful exercises.”19

  Murray was also expert at networking. He frequently shipped copies of his latest editions to people who might be in a position to spread the word about them. For instance, he sent a box of books to the well-known geographer and Congregationalist minister Jedidiah Morse, explaining in the accompanying letter, “The books which accompany this note lately received new editions, in which the author hopes there will be found some improvements.” He goes on to say that he has enclosed duplicates, in case Dr. Morse “should incline to promote American impressions [that is, American printings of the book], he may do it the better from having the latest editions.”20

  Murray also sent books to New York state politician Samuel Latham Mitchill. In 1804, shortly after Mitchill was elected to the U.S. Senate, Murray sent him a copy of the latest edition of English Grammar with a note asking for Mitchill’s opinion. He expressed gratification that the book had been well received in his native country, and especially that Yale and other universities had adopted it. “It would be very pleasing,” he told Mitchill, “to know that in the college of New York they were also received.”21

  Aside from Murray’s energetic promotional activities, the grammar itself must have had some special appeal to sell so well. Americans no doubt recognized that it was much more practical than other grammar books on the market. Although later editions were longer and more detailed than the original volume, Murray kept essentially the same clearly organized structure. Following Lowth, Murray didn’t obfuscate with too much Latin. Students were not faced with long lists of verb conjugations and noun declensions to be memorized. Murray also provided material targeted to specific groups. For young children and other beginners, the abridgment was available. For those who wanted extra practice, there was the exercise book.

  The overall message of English Grammar was also clear and straightforward, in contrast to A Grammatical Institute, Part II. Murray did not explore alternative theories of usage or argue that It is me and Who did she speak to? should be accepted as standard speech because everyone said those things. His stated purpose was to teach his readers to speak and write with elegance and precision. Americans eager to improve their language skills could rest assured that if they mastered Murray’s grammar they would sound like educated people. That, rather than a deep understanding of the American idiom, was their goal.

  * * *

  The American embrace of Murray is ironic in some respects. While it’s true that he was an American and always spoke of the United States as his home, he spent the second half of his life in England. During the Revolutionary War, Murray’s father was a prominent Loyalist and most likely Murray himself was sympathetic to the British. Neither Murray’s Tory leanings nor his long residence in Yorkshire kept Americans from buying his books.

  Murray’s American roots were not very deep. When he was born on March 27, 1745, his father, Robert, had not been in the country long. Robert had immigrated to Pennsylvania as a boy, coming from Ireland in 1732 with his brother John and their father. They settled in Swatara (then known as Swetara), about eighteen miles northeast of Harrisburg. Shortly after the family’s arrival, the elder Murray bought a large parcel of land along Swatara Creek and set up a successful flour mill. Robert took it over while still a young man.

  Murray’s mother, Mary Lindley, was also the daughter of recent imm
igrants. They, too, came from Ireland, but unlike the Presbyterian Murrays, they were Quakers, part of the wave of Quaker immigrants who arrived in Pennsylvania during the early eighteenth century. Mary Lindley’s father, Thomas, settled in Philadelphia. He flourished, first as a blacksmith, then as the owner of an iron forge. Around 1733 he bought a large parcel of land outside Swatara, where he quickly became a prominent citizen. He served as a justice of the peace and later became a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly.

  In 1744 Robert Murray and Mary Lindley married after Murray converted to Quakerism. Lindley was born a year later. He was the first of twelve children, although only five would survive to adulthood. Robert Murray had ambitions beyond the flour mill. He made several profitable trading trips to the West Indies when Lindley was still a baby. Then in 1753, after moving to North Carolina for a brief time, he settled with his family in Manhattan. Here he established a successful shipping business. By the 1760s he was one of New York’s wealthiest merchants, well connected among the Quaker families of the city, and the owner of an impressive mansion overlooking the East River. (The mansion stood at what is now Park Avenue and 36th Street, a neighborhood still known as Murray Hill.)

  Young Lindley’s education was distinctly different from that of Noah Webster and others who attended village schools before the Revolution. Around the age of eleven, he spent a year at the prestigious Academy of Philadelphia, founded by Benjamin Franklin. In his memoirs, Murray recalls being “agreeably exercised in the business of parsing sentences.” He also remembers enjoying a book titled The Travels of Cyrus, which tells the story of a young Persian prince’s travels through the ancient world.22 Such books would rarely have come the way of public schoolchildren.

  Later Murray attended a good New York school, where he claimed to have made “the usual progress of young learners,” in spite of occasionally skipping school. Eventually he grew to love reading and scholarship, and when his father took him from school as a teenager to work in the family countinghouse, young Lindley resisted. He was not interested in being a merchant. After one unusually explosive clash with his father, he packed his bags, took the money he had saved, and ran away from home. His intention was to enroll in a well-known Quaker academy in Burlington, New Jersey, and study French.

  Murray arrived at the school and signed up as a boarder, apparently covering the expenses himself. His parents discovered his whereabouts almost immediately, but allowed him to remain at the school for a time. Eventually he was coaxed back home and he and his father reconciled. After Murray’s return, Robert Murray agreed to allow him a private tutor. Murray writes in his memoir, “I pursued this new career with great alacrity of mind. I sat up late, and rose early, in the prosecution of my studies.”23 He also joined a young men’s debating society that met weekly.

  Murray was more than ever convinced that he wanted to pursue a scholarly career. He decided that he would like to study law and, after some initial reluctance, his father agreed. Lindley became a pupil of Robert Murray’s lawyer, Benjamin Kissam. In 1767, at the age of twenty-two, he was admitted to the New York bar.

  Recently married to Hannah Dobson, Murray settled down to practice law. About a year later his career was briefly interrupted when his father traveled to England on business and the rest of the family, including Murray and his wife, accompanied him. Murray returned to New York in 1771 and resumed his law practice. He had a wide circle of business connections and did very well until the upheavals of the Revolution shut down the courts.

  At about the same time Murray suffered an episode of severe illness. When he recovered, the Murrays decided to move to Islip, a quiet hamlet on the south shore of Long Island. In this idyllic spot Murray hoped to regain his health. Another motivation was to escape New York until, in Murray’s words, “the political storm should blow over, and the horizon become again clear and settled.”24

  The extent of Murray’s loyalty to England is unclear. His evident wish to avoid involvement in the Revolution may have stemmed from Tory sympathies, but it might also have been inspired by a Quaker opposition to war. Murray’s mother and other family members were known to support the American cause. His father, however, was a committed Loyalist. Robert Murray openly traded with the British before and during the war, and almost certainly was part of a supply chain providing the British army with flour. After the king’s army captured and occupied New York, its officers were welcomed into the elder Murray’s Manhattan home.

  Whatever the son’s views, after four years in Islip spent mostly fishing and sailing, he was ready to return to New York. Murray had begun to feel as though he needed to earn money again. He joined his father in the import-export business and was extremely successful. By the end of the war, he had amassed a large enough fortune to retire.

  Murray and his wife then purchased what he describes in his memoirs as “a country seat” on the banks of the Hudson, about three miles outside the city. They planned to settle down to a bucolic life, surrounded by extensive gardens and their own cattle pastures. No thoughts were in Murray’s mind of a writing career. Before they could settle into their new home, however, Murray’s always-fragile health broke down completely. Besides fever and chills, he experienced muscle weakness so severe he could barely walk. After a time he improved, but he never fully recovered. From then on, Murray’s health would dictate the shape of his life.

  The Murrays tried different remedies. They traveled to the Pennsylvania countryside, where they spent several weeks getting to know the Moravian community. When temperatures rose into the 90s, they traveled into the mountains for relief. They visited medicinal springs, where Murray sampled the waters. Nothing improved his health. Gradually he noticed that hot summer weather had an especially damaging effect. When Murray and his wife began to think of relocating to a cooler climate, Murray’s doctor suggested Yorkshire.

  At the end of 1784 the Murrays sailed for England, believing that they would return to New York after a few years. In fact, they would remain in Yorkshire for the rest of their lives—more than forty years. The gentleman farmer’s existence that Murray had planned for himself would never materialize. Instead he was a little more than a decade away from writing the books that would make him famous and define grammar study until the middle of the nineteenth century.25

  * * *

  Sometime in 1803 Lindley Murray mailed a copy of his grammar book to Noah Webster, enclosing a friendly letter. It opens, “I take the liberty of requesting that the Author of ‘Dissertations on the English Language’ will do me the favour to accept a copy of the new edition of my grammar as a small testimony of my respect for his talents and character.” After further complimenting Webster on his “ingenious and sensible writings,” Murray asks that Webster look over the grammar and convey any suggestions he may have for improvement.26

  This letter was the only direct communication that Murray and Webster would have. Webster’s answer would not appear for several years and when it did, it would take a form far different from the letter that Murray expected. Instead Webster responded by writing a new grammar book of his own. He was more firmly convinced than ever of the ideas that he had formed while writing his grammar lectures in 1785, and also more disapproving of conventional grammar books. Any “suggestions for improvement” that Webster had for Murray were incorporated into his book as attacks. Webster later claimed that he had sent Murray a copy of his new book, along with what he termed a polite letter, but Murray apparently never received it.

  The past decade had been a busy one for Webster, although little of it had been spent in language writing. His energies were mainly channeled into the political writing that appeared in his Federalist newspaper, The American Minerva. Webster and his family returned to New Haven in 1798 after five years in New York, but Webster continued to edit and publish the Minerva until 1801. Then a rival Federalist journal, the Evening Post, began siphoning off Webster’s readers. He decided to sell the paper and get out of the journalism business. Afterward h
e continued writing vigorously on a variety of topics. He published A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases in 1799, after an outbreak of yellow fever piqued his interest in the subject. In 1805 he brought out the two-volume Elements of Useful Knowledge, a survey of American history and geography.

  At the same time he returned to his first love, American English. In 1806 Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. This dictionary was his first attempt at recording American words. Although much less comprehensive than his monumental 1828 dictionary would be, the Compendious Dictionary was a substantial piece of work. It featured five thousand new words not recorded in previous dictionaries, and cemented Webster’s reputation as a language scholar.

  As usual with Webster’s publications, not everyone was happy with the book. Some critics were scandalized by Webster’s audacity in attempting to compete with the great British lexicographer Samuel Johnson, whose 1755 Dictionary of the English Language was considered the gold standard. Others were troubled by the inclusion of “low” words (bamboozle) and Americanisms (presidential, deputize), as well as a number of simplified spellings (aker for acre, tung for tongue, wimen for women). Most commentators, however, considered the book a major accomplishment.

  In the first few pages of the dictionary’s preface, Webster talks about his latest views on grammar, a preview of the grammar book that he would publish the following year. Writing to his friend Joel Barlow in 1807, he describes his new grammar project: “My grammar had its run but it has been superseded by Murray’s. Both are wrong. I have lately published one on Horne Tooke’s plan, which President Smith of Princeton pronounces the best analysis of the language ever published.”27 Webster’s new version of English grammar gave him a chance to correct what he saw as his own earlier mistakes, while pointing out those of Murray and other grammarians. His goal, as before, was to rescue Americans from linguistic ignorance and make them aware of how their language really worked.