William Hickling Prescott: Launching a Bark

Abstract

The indecision which plagued Prescott regarding the advisability of publishing the massive manuscript on which he had labored a decade yielded to a decisively vigorous, though little known, presentation of that work to the American reading public.The manuscript of the History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, concluded by Prescott in mid-1836, passed, in succeeding months, through the hands of one friendly critic after another. First to subject the long opus to critical evaluation was William Howard Gardiner, a foremost figure in the inner circle of Prescott's Boston neighbors and literary friends. Next it went to editor-historian Jared Sparks, then situated in Cambridge. Reflectively reading and, as circumstances permitted, occasionally visiting Prescott to discuss the manuscript with him, Sparks never had reason to retract the judgment he pronounced on February 24, 1837 in a brief note which closed with the succinct assertion, “The book will be sucessful,—bought, read and praised.” With the spring of 1837 the itinerant manuscript passed into the hands of the scholarly-minded city solicitor of Boston, John Pickering, but before that reader could be heard from, Prescott was actively facing the publication problem on another front.