Thomas Dilworth

The Reverend Mr. Thomas Dilworth (died 1780) was an English cleric and author of a widely used schoolbook, both in Great Britain and America, A New Guide to the English Tongue. Noah Webster as a boy studied Dilworth's book, and was inspired partly by it to create his own spelling book on completely different principles, using pictures and stories of interest to children. By some accounts Dilworth was one of the few schoolbooks used by Abraham Lincoln. Published in 1740, by 1773, it was in its t…