William H. Prescott

William Hickling Prescott (Salem, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796 - Boston, January 29, 1859), better known as William H. Prescott, was a American Hispanist and historian.

Trajectory

The son of William Prescott Jr., a lawyer, and Catherine Greene Hickling, he was descended from a prominent family of English origin. His paternal grandfather, William Prescott, served as a Patriot colonel in the American Revolutionary War, and played a prominent role in the Battle of Bunker Hill. William H. Prescott was descended, through his mother's line, from Captain John Linzee, who fought in the same battle but on the royalist side. The crossed swords of both soldiers, which once graced the historian's library, are now in the Massachusetts Historical Society.^{[citation needed]}

As a young man, he seriously injured one of his eyes from a forcefully thrown crust of stale bread while attending Harvard University, graduating with a law degree in 1814. He subsequently traveled extensively through Europe, in which he visited England, France and Italy, from April 1816 to July 1817. Although the eye lesion worsened and spread to the other eye and did not allow him to read for just a few hours a day, he decided to devote himself to history. In this decision, he had the full support of his family, who had more than enough means. His peculiar method of work consisted in requiring the help of a secretary to read aloud to him; thanks to the fact that he developed an excellent sound memory (he could remember up to sixty pages read, verbatim), he was able to write his first works. ^{[citation needed ]}

In 1821, he made his first contribution to the North American Review: a review of Lord Byron's letters to Alexander Pope. To this magazine he later sent for many years the results of his research, which at that time ranged from French literature to Elizabethan drama, English ballads and Italian literature. Although at first he thought of dedicating himself entirely to the latter, he began to become passionate about Hispanic studies, by virtue of the friendship he began to cultivate with the Harvard professor and Hispanic scholar George Ticknor, who would later be his biographer ( The life of William Hikcling Prescott, Boston, 1864, revised 1875), and decided to specialize in the history of Spain and Latin America. He likewise became friends with the Hispanist and bibliographer Obadiah Rich (1783-1850). On May 4, 1820, he married Susan Amory.

His first work was The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic (1837), which achieved immediate success. He also wrote various critical and historical studies while researching to write his most important work, the History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) with the help of the Spanish Arabist Pascual de Gayangos y Arce. His international success earned him great prestige and encouraged him to also undertake History of the conquest of Peru (1847). Although his eyesight was weakening due to the efforts to which he subjected it, he did not stop his work, he suffered a stroke in 1858 and died the following year, leaving his History of Felipe II (vols. I and vols.) unfinished. II, 1855; vol. III, 1858). All these works were translated into numerous languages and earned him the appreciation of the greatest spirits of his time.

As much as Prescott's works appear today as outdated, his work survives thanks to his narrative spirit, his impartiality and documentary rigor, and the vigor and plasticity of his excellent style, and for this reason he is considered one of the best American historians and the first to be valued as such on the other side of the Atlantic. His Biographical and Critical Miscellanies appeared in 1859. His collected works appeared in 16 volumes edited by J. F. Kirk between 1870 and 1874. They were later enlarged by W. H. Munro (22 vol., 1904, repr. 1968). His Correspondence was collected by Roger Wolcott (1925) and the literary Memoranda of him by C. Harvey Gardiner (1961).

Published Works

• History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic (1837).
• History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843).
• Biographical and Critical Miscellanies (1845).
• History of the Conquest of Peru (1847).
• History of the Reign of Philip II (1855-58). Incomplete
• The Correspondence of William Hickling Prescott (1833 - 1847). Roger Wolcott Edition. Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925.
• The Literary Memoranda of William Hickling Prescott. 2 vols. C. Harvey Gardiner Edition. Oklahoma, 1961.
• The Papers of William Hickling Prescott. C. Harvey Gardiner Edition. Illinois, 1964.