Richard Lederer: His Works

Richard Lederer: His Works

Richard Lederer was once asked where he would get all these funny stories he answered: "Ever since I became a writer, I had found that questions the most difficult to answer and had only recently come up with an analogy that I thought would satisfy both my audience and me. Pouncing on the opportunity to unveil my spanking new explanation, I countered with, Where does the spider get its web?

The idea, of course, was that the spider is not aware how it spins out its intricate and beautiful patterns with the silky material that is simply a natural part of itself. Asking a writer to account for the genesis of his or her ideas is as futile as asking a spider the source of its web and method of its construction." Richard Lederer

Introduction and bibliography

Richard Lederer was the kind of child who, almost as soon as he could talk, saw a butterfly and cooed, "Oh, goody. A butterfly will flutter by." Even as a high- school student, Richard knew that Elvis Presley, born three years before him, would become immortal because he recognized that "Elvis Lives" is a two-word anagram. Richard Lederer entered Haverford College as a pre-medical student but soon found that he was reading the chemistry books for their literary value. Mr.

Lederer became an English major and then attended Harvard Law School, where he found that he read the law cases for their literary value. So rather than fighting his verbivorous instincts, He switched into a Masters of Arts and

Teaching program at Harvard. That led to a position at St. Paul's School, in

Concord, NH, where he taught English and media for 27 years. Richard Lederer said that he would have gladly served them for the rest of his days, but having earned a Ph.D. in English and Linguistics from the University of New Hampshire inspired him to write books on language. The enthusiastic and popular response to these books, beginning with ‘Anguished English', gave him the opportunity to leave the St. Paul's community to extend his mission to teach in the English language. More than a million of his books are in print, most with Pocket Books and Dell.

Richard Lederer has a column, "Looking at Language," which reaches more than a million readers through newspapers and magazines across the United States. His books have been nominated for the Book-of-the-Month Club as well as appearing in the Literary Guild alternate selections, and, in addition, his work has received positive reviews from the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, National Review, and Reader's Digest.