"William Hickling Prescott" by Harry Thurston Peck. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
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Harry Thurston Peck. William Hickling Prescott
William Hickling Prescott
Table of Contents
PRESCOTT
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
CHAPTER I. THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORIANS
CHAPTER II. EARLY YEARS
CHAPTER III. THE CHOICE OF A CAREER
CHAPTER IV. SUCCESS
CHAPTER V. IN MID CAREER
CHAPTER VI. THE LAST TEN YEARS
CHAPTER VII "FERDINAND AND ISABELLA"—PRESCOTT'S STYLE
CHAPTER VIII. THE "CONQUEST OF MEXICO" AS LITERATURE AND AS HISTORY
CHAPTER IX "THE CONQUEST OF PERU"—"PHILIP II."
CHAPTER X. PRESCOTT'S RANK AS AN HISTORIAN
INDEX
FOOTNOTES:
Отрывок из книги
Harry Thurston Peck
Published by Good Press, 2019
.....
There were, however, other themes, American in a larger sense, which contained within themselves all the elements of the romantic, while they closely linked the ambitions of old Europe with the fortunes and the future of the New World. The narration of these might well appeal to that interest which the more sober annals of England in America wholly failed to rouse. There was the story of New France, which had for its background a setting of savage nature, while in the foreground was fought out the struggle between Englishmen and Frenchmen, at grips in a feud perpetuated through the centuries. There was the story of Spanish conquest in the south—a true romance of chivalry, which had not yet been told in all its richness of detail. To choose a subject of this sort, and to develop it in a fitting way, was to write at once for the Old World and the New. The task demanded scholarship, and presented formidable difficulties. The chief sources of information were to be found in foreign lands. To secure them needed wealth. To compare and analyse and sift them demanded critical judgment of a high order. And something more was needed—a capacity for artistic presentation. When both these gifts were found united in a single mind, historical writing in New England had passed beyond the confines of its early crudeness and had reached the stage where it claimed rank as lasting literature. Rightly viewed, the name of William Hickling Prescott is something more than a mere landmark in the field of historical composition. It signalises the beginning of a richer growth in New England letters—the coming of a time when the barriers of a Puritan scholasticism were broken down. Prescott is not merely the continuator of Sparks. He is the precursor of Hawthorne and Parkman and Lowell. He takes high rank among American historians; but he is enrolled as well in a still more illustrious group by virtue of his literary fame.
