Francis Parkman (1823-1893) was one of America's first
and greatest historians, author of such narrative masterpieces
as The Oregon Trail, France and England in North
America and The Conspiracy of Pontiac.
William R. Taylor, volume editor, is professor emeritus at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook and former program
director of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He is the
author of Cavalier and Yankee and In Pursuit of
Gotham: Culture and Commerce in New York.
“Like Thucydides, Francis Parkman conceived of historical inquiry as a literary enterprise of the highest order, requiring both scientific method and the art of rendering a story. As he narrated the sufferings of the French explorers, he studied early maps in order to imagine the wilderness as seen through their eyes. The ideal historical narrator, Parkman felt, ‘must himself be, as it were, a sharer or spectator of the action he described.’ He wrote as though he were a fellow-explorer at Champlain’s side.” — The New Yorker
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