Arriving at a literary identity …

… Review: Books examine how words influence American culture | Arts | roanoke.com. (Hat tip, Tim Davis.)

In the end, it is Webster who gets credit for our own American language guide book. It isn’t Johnson or Worcester or Merriam who is celebrated in the Frank Sinatra hit “Too Marvelous for Words,;” which features the refrain “You’re much too much — and just too ‘very, very’ / To ever be in Webster’s Dictionary.”