His “Blue-backed Spellers” were best sellers

One of the interesting facts about Noah Webster is that he was a prolific author even though his dictionary is what made him most famous. Only the revenues of his widely used school textbooks, the "Blue-backed Speller," which he wrote over several decades, allowed him to continue working on his dictionary. Webster came to the conclusion that the American educational system needed to be changed during his time as a student and later as a teacher. All ages of children were jammed into one-room classrooms that lacked desks, had subpar textbooks and had inexperienced teachers.

Even though this was after the American Revolution, the books they read frequently swore loyalty to King George and were published in England. He intended to offer a distinctly American method of child training. He said that the most significant change he made was to free "our original speech" from the pedantic clamor that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He bemoaned how the British nobility, which had its own rules for spelling and pronunciation, had debased the English language. Webster disagreed with the idea that learning English grammar must come after learning Greek and Latin. According to Webster, "the same republican ideals as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions" should be the basis for the American language. This implied that language must be governed by the general populace; popular sovereignty in governance must be accompanied by popular language usage.

A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, which Webster produced in 1783, was his textbook because he thought that Americans should study from American texts. The "Blue-Backed Speller" moniker was given to it because of its distinctive blue cover. Webster's book has been used to teach kids how to read, spell, and pronounce words for more than 100 years. With approximately 100 million copies sold, it was the best-selling book in America at the time.