Lindley Murray

Grammarian, born in Swatara Creek, Pennsylvania, USA. He practised law, made his fortune in New York City during the War of Independence and then, for health reasons, retired to England in 1784, buying an estate near York. His English Grammar (1795) was for long the standard text, and was followed by English Exercises, the English Reader, and various religious works.

He was the eldest son of Robert Murray, the Quaker merchant whose home was on a hill in Manhattan on what today is Park Avenue.

Murray was forced into exile after the Revolution as a loyalist, settling in York, England, where a Quaker community existed. Known as the "Father of English Grammar," Murray's textbooks were widely printed in Britain (particularly his English Grammar) but had their greatest success in the new United States, partly because no international copyright agreement existed and the books could be reprinted without royalties being paid. Some sixteen million copies of Murray's books were sold in America and another four million in Britain. His most popular work was his English Reader, full of selections from the liberal-minded writers of the Scottish Enlightenment, most notably the Rev. Abraham Lincoln praised the English Reader as "the best schoolbook ever put in the hands of an American youth". The English Reader utterly dominated the American market for readers for over a generation from 1815 into the 1840s.

For the last sixteen years of his life he was confined to the house.

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910).