We're commemorating the remarkable life of Connecticut native Noah Webster, the lexicographer whose name has become synonymous with dictionaries. He was born on October 16, 1758.

Index
-Announcements
-Exhibition Connection: Joel Barlow's Lucky $500 Loan 
-Featured Upcoming Programs: Pequot Library's Annual Meeting
-Recommended Reading: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
- Recommended Reading: Two Dictionary-themed Picks for Kids
-Special Collections: Noah Webster's Revolutionary Concept 
-Community Corner: MoCA Some Noise 10/20 
-Shop for Books Online

Did you know - we're now open on Thursday nights until 8 p.m.!

Our current exhibition, The Lure of the Garden: The Enduring Desire to Work and Shape the Land, provides a compelling connection to Noah Webster: Webster and Joel Barlow befriended each other during their studies at Yale. When Webster finished writing his first blue-backed spelling manual designed to give American English more uniformity, Barlow loaned him $500 to publish it. (Their fellow classmate, poet John Trumbull, also pitched in funds). The book has been published continuously since 1783. Click here to read more about Webster and Barlow's consequential student days and their group of friends, which included not only Trumbull but Timothy Dwight and Nathan Hale. 

You'll find a copy of Barlow's The Hasty Pudding: a poem, in three cantos on display in our exhibition. Barlow was born in Redding, Connecticut, in 1754. His famous mock-heroic ode to hasty pudding (also called "cornmeal mush") expressed the nostalgia he experienced for a simple and familiar New England food while living abroad in France. The poem also used food and the idea of the hard-working Yankee farmer to define a sense of both regional and national identity in the young nation. In this vision, Indian Corn was celebrated as the national food of European Americans.

The Hasty Pudding: a poem, in three cantos by Joel Barlow
New Haven: Printed by T. and S. Green, for Tiebout and O'Brien, New York, 1796
Pequot Library Special Collections

Click here to View the More Information About Pequot Library Digital Digest E-Newsletter - October 15, 2022