Herbert Morton     Researcher, 2002

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Herbert C. Morton was briefly associated with the Steinway Diary Project in 2002, the year of his death.

A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Morton received his doctorate in business and economics from the University of Minnesota. He came to Washington, DC in 1956, working first as publications director at the Brookings Institution and then as editor of the Monthly Labor Review at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Subsequently he directed scholarly communications and technology at the American Council of Learned Societies. He was best known as the author of The Story of Webster’s Third: Phillip Grove’s Controversial Dictionary and Its Critics. Published in 1994, this book was well received. The Washington Post Book World called it a splendid account “that should make clear to the lay reader the aims and methods of lexicography, a business until now understood by almost no one." He had served on the board of the Dictionary Society of North America and since 1987 had focused on research and review of lexicographic works. Morton died in Bethesda, Maryland in December 2002.