William Hickling Prescott | Biography

William Hickling Prescott (4 May 1796-28 January 1859), early Victorian historian of the Spanish empire, was born in Salem, Massachusetts. Prescott possessed the typical characteristics of the Brahmin caste of New England. He was of old New England Scotts: his ancestor John Prescott settled in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, about 1640. In 1796 William Prescott married Catherine Hickling, daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant. In 1808 Prescott's father moved to Boston, where he invested successfully in industry, railroads, and insurance. Prescott entered the sophomore class at Harvard College in 1811, intending to follow his father's career in the practice of law, but drastic physical maladies soon forced a change of direction. During his junior year, Prescott lost the sight of his left eye when struck by a hard crust of bread during a brawl in the college dining hall. He continued his studies, and had earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa by the time of his graduation in 1814. After graduation, Prescott began several months of study in his father's law office. In 1815 he suffered a seizure of acute rheumatism, and for extended periods of time could neither see nor walk. The acute inflammation of his right eye steadily worsened, and Prescott was never able to use his remaining eye except for short periods of time and at great discomfort. In September of 1815, Prescott embarked upon a two-year convalescence in the Azores, the British Isles, and Europe.His gentlemanly tour stimulated a desire to write European history. Despite the warning of his physician, Prescott decided to pursue a literary career. Prescott employed assistants to read aloud to him. At first Prescott worked with German sources, but found the script too taxing for the limited use of his frail eye, and by 1822 had switched to an intensive study of the languages and literature of England, France, and Italy. By 1825 Prescott had concentrated his efforts upon the history of Spain. The previous year, George Ticknor, a professor of Spanish and French literature at Harvard, began reading to Prescott his lectures on Spanish literature. Prescott thereafter concentrated his major research upon a history of the Spanish empire. Already in 1821 Prescott had launched his writing career with a series of essays and articles for the North American Review. Even after he became engrossed in the history of Spain, Prescott continued to write essays on American literary and historical subjects. His most important were later collected as Biographical and Critical Miscellanies (1845). For over three decades Prescott toiled on several volumes of Spanish history. His writing was centered in Boston, and except for occasional forays to New York, Washington, and elsewhere, Prescott rarely ventured outside of his Brahmin world. Instead the romance of the Spanish empire was conveyed to his desk in Boston. The wealthy Prescott family procured the needed manuscripts and books from libraries in Europe and Mexico. In 1838 Prescott's first major work was published, a three-volume study entitled The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic. Though plagued by a renewal of his eye malady, Prescott worked intently upon his next project, to write exhaustive studies of the conquests of Peru and Mexico. In 1843 he published his three-volume History of the Conquest of Mexico, and followed in 1847 with a two-volume History of the Conquest of Peru. In these and subsequent volumes on the Spanish empire, Prescott demonstrated the craft of the narrative historian of the early Victorian era. Constitutional and economic problems scarcely interested him; the romance of court life, the excitement of battle, and the saga of colonial empires were the themes stressed by Prescott. Such were his interests until 1859, when he died in Boston, hours after being striken with apoplexy.