William H. Prescott

William Hickling Prescott (May 4, 1796 – January 29, 1859) was an American historian, known for his books "The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic" and "The History of the Conquest of Mexico".

Biography

William H. Prescott was born in Salem, Massachusetts on May 4, 1796, the first of seven children, though four of his siblings died in infancy. [Sullivan, Wilson. "New England Men of Letters". New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972: 154. ISBN 0027886808] His parents were William Prescott, Jr., who was a lawyer, and his wife, née Catherine Greene Hickling. His grandfather William Prescott served as a Colonel during the American Revolutionary War. Young William Prescott began formal schooling at the age of seven before the family moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1808; his studies continued under Dr. John Gardiner, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church. [Sullivan, Wilson. "New England Men of Letters". New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972: 155–156. ISBN 0027886808]

Prescott enrolled at Harvard College as a sophomore in August 1811, living in the same room where both his father stayed and his future son would stay. [Sullivan, Wilson. "New England Men of Letters". New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972: 156. ISBN 0027886808] Prescott suffered from failing eyesight after a thrown crust of bread was temporarily lodged in his eye. It was a problem that would haunt him for the rest of his life, losing eyesight in one eye completely and in the other significantly, with the remaining eye suffering ups and downs, sometimes being inactive altogether for periods of time. This He graduated from Harvard in 1814. He made an extended tour in Europe, and on his return to America he married, and abandoning the idea of a legal career, resolved to devote himself to literature. After ten years of study, he published in 1837 his "History of Ferdinand and Isabella", which at once gained for him a high place among historians. It was followed in 1843 by the "History of the Conquest of Mexico", and in 1847 by the "Conquest of Peru". His last work was the "History of Philip II", of which the third volume appeared in 1858, and which was left unfinished. In that year he had an apoplectic shock, and another in 1859 was the cause of his death.

In all his works he displayed great research, impartiality, and an admirable narrative power. The great disadvantage at which, owing to his very imperfect vision, he worked, makes the first of these qualities specially remarkable, for his authorities in a foreign tongue were read to him, while he had to write on a frame for the blind. Prescott was a man of amiable and benevolent character, and enjoyed the friendship of many of the most distinguished men in Europe as well as in America.

Much of Prescott's work was based on his researches with unpublished documents in archives in Spain.

W. H. Prescott died of a stroke in Boston, Massachusetts.

Legacy

In Arizona, the town of Prescott was named after him for his "The Conquest of Mexico".

Prescott's "History of the Conquest of Mexico" was a seminal influence on Edward E. Ayer (1841–1927), a wealthy antiquarian and collector of books and original manuscripts from Native American and colonial-era histories and ethnography. During his lifetime Ayer amassed a collection of more than fifty thousand volumes and documents on pre-and post-Columbian American histories, which as the Ayer Collection donated to the Newberry Library in Chicago represented one of the most extensive and significant Americana collections then accumulated. Ayer credited Prescott's "Conquest" books as the inspiration behind his efforts and interest in Americanist literature, since as Ayer himself noted they had been the "first books [he] had ever bought and that they had given [him] the incentive to read and taught [him] how interesting history was." [Quote is from the text written by Ayer on the flyleaves of his original copy, which he retained throughout his life; as reproduced in Ayer (1950).] In his later memoirs, Ayer confirmed:

I feel that that day, taking those books home, was, perhaps, the happiest day of my life up to that time; and going home I only touched the earth in high places. And I want to reiterate that the finding of Prescott’s "Conquest of Mexico" in that mine in Arizona in ’62, has been responsible and is to be credited as the principal force that has given me a vast amount of enjoyment in this world, and is absolutely responsible for the “Ayer Collection” in the Newberry Library, Chicago. [Quotation reproduced in Lockwood (1929, p.49).]

In 1966 the Colegio Anglo Americano Prescott (school) [http://www.prescott.edu.pe/noticias/index.php] was founded in Arequipa, Peru in Prescott's honor. The first principal was Manuel Paz Bishop.

Published works

Prescott's published works include:
*"The History of Ferdinand and Isabella"
*"Spain's Conquest of the Moors"
*"The Conquest of Mexico"
*"The Conquest of Peru"
*"The History of Philip II"

See also

* William H. Prescott House
* Spanish conquest of Mexico
* Spanish conquest of Peru
* , in Wikisource.

References

Further reading

* |authorlink=Edward E. Ayer |year=1950 |month=December |title=How I Bought My First Book |url=http://www.newberry.org/collections/Ayer_How_I.html |format=reproduced online, text originally written by Ayer on the flyleaves of his copy of Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" |journal=Newberry Library Bulletin |location=Chicago |publisher=Newberry Library |issn=0028-8861 |oclc=2521448 |accessdate=2008-05-27
* |year=1929 |title=The life of Edward E. Ayer |location=Chicago, IL |publisher=A.C. McClurg |oclc=1251430
* |year=1864 |title=Necrology of Alumni of Harvard College, 1851–52 to 1862–63 |location=Boston, MA |publisher=J. Wilson and Son |oclc=1344448
* |authorlink=George Ticknor |year=1861 |title=Papers discussing the comparative merits of Prescott's and Wilson's histories, pro. and con.: As laid before the Massachusetts Historical Society |location=Boston ||publisher= [sine nomine| [s.n.] |oclc=12315930
* |authorlink=Robert Anderson Wilson|year=1859 |title=A New History of the Conquest of Mexico: In which Las Casas' denunciations of the popular historians of that war are fully vindicated |location=Philadelphia, PA |publisher=James Challen & Son |oclc=9642461
* |authorlink=Justin Winsor |year=2006 |origyear=1866 |chapter=Cortés and his Companions: Critical essay on the documentary sources of Mexican history|title=Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 |editor=Justin Winsor, (ed.) |edition=unabridged facsimile of edn. published 1866 [Boston:Houghton, Mifflin & Co.] |series=Elibron Classics series |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Adamant Media Corporation |pages=pp.397–430|isbn=0-543-98914-3 |oclc=3523208

External links

* [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/LEVIN/levtit.html David Levin, History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman]
* [http://55.1911encyclopedia.org/P/PR/PRESCOTT_WILLIAM_HICKLING.htm Biography in 1911 Encyclopedia]
* [http://www.bartleby.com/65/pr/PrscttWH.html Columbia Encyclopedia article]
* [http://www.accuracyproject.org/cbe-Prescott,WilliamH.html William H. Prescott] profile at Internet Accuracy Project
*
** [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/2/4/13240/13240-h/13240-h.htm Biography in "A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature" by John W. Cousin]
* [http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PreConq.html "History of the Conquest of Mexico, with a Preliminary View of Ancient Mexican Civilization, and the Life of the Conqueror, Hernando Cortes"] , by William H. Prescott, full-text online reproduction by Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library