Francis Parkman

Born in Boston in 1823, Francis Parkman became one of the best-known American historians of the 19th century. He is especially remembered for The Oregon Trail and for the multivolume series France and England in North America, works that combined careful historical research with a strong narrative style.

Parkman was drawn early to the outdoors and to the history of North America. As a young man he traveled in the West, an experience that helped shape The Oregon Trail. Despite long periods of poor health and serious problems with his eyesight, he continued his historical work over many years and built a large body of writing that remained widely read after his death in 1893.

His books were admired for their energy, detail, and sense of drama, and they helped shape how generations of readers imagined early American and Canadian history. Modern readers and scholars still value Parkman both as a major literary historian and as an important voice in 19th-century historical writing, even as his interpretations are also read in the context of the attitudes of his time.