"The Man for the Hour": A Defense of Francis Parkman's Frontenac

Abstract

1 The main sources for Parkman's life are his letters and journals, particularly those found in Wilbur R. Jacobs, editor, Letters of Francis Parkman, 2 vols. (Norman, 1960), and Mason Wade, editor, The Journals of Francis Parkman, 2 vols. (New York, 1947). Also important are the memoirs by O. B. Frothingham (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2nd series, vIII, 1894) and Edward Wheelwright (Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, I, 1894). There are a number of biographies: Charles H. Farnham, Life of Francis Parkman (Boston, 1915); Henry Dwight Sedgewick, Francis Parkman (Boston, 1904); Mason Wade, Francis Parkman, Heroic Historian (New York, 1942); and Howard Doughty, Francis Parkman (New York, 1962). of the best insights into Parkman's life occur in articles, reviews, introductions, or works on larger subjects. See Wilbur R. Jacobs' introduction in Letters of Francis Parkman; Wilbur L. Schramms' introduction to Francis Parkman, Representative Selections (New York, 1938); Samuel Eliot Morison's introduction to the Parkman Reader (New York, 1955); and Wilbur R. Jacobs, Some of Parkman's Literary Devices, NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY, XXXI (June, 1958). Two works of importance are Otis Pease, Parkman's History: The Historian as Literary Artist (New Haven, 1953), and David Levin, History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Motley, Prescott, and Parkman (Stanford, 1959). 2 Quoted by Jacobs, Some of Parkman's Literary Devices, NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY, XXXI, 251 (June, 1958).