William Hickling Prescott

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1796, William Hickling Prescott became one of the best-known American historians of the 19th century. He studied at Harvard, but a serious eye injury in his youth left him with lasting vision problems and made sustained reading and writing difficult for the rest of his life.

Even with that disability, he built a remarkable literary career by developing careful working methods with assistants and by dictating much of his work. He is especially remembered for History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, History of the Conquest of Mexico, and History of the Conquest of Peru, books that brought together wide reading, archival research, and a strong sense of narrative drama.

Prescott died in Boston in 1859. He is often described as one of the first major American historians to approach history as a disciplined research project while still writing for a broad general audience, which helps explain why his work remained widely read long after his lifetime.