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Title: Francis Parkman

Publisher: Brown and Company Little

Release date: August 25, 2017 [eBook #55424]

Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCIS PARKMAN ***

FRANCIS PARKMAN

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

1896.

Copyright, 1896,

by LITTLE, BROWN, AND CO.

University Press:

JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

Francis Parkman.

"One of the convincing tests of genius is the choice of a theme, and no greater felicity can befall it than to find one both familiar and fresh. All the better if tradition, however attenuated, have made it already friendly with our fancy. In the instinct that led him straight to subjects that seemed waiting for him so long, Mr. Parkman gave no uncertain proof of his fitness for an adequate treatment of them."—JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

THE greatest of all American historians was indeed exceptionately fortunate in his choice of a subject. Writing as he did of the colonization of North America from the landing of Champlain, and of the warfare between France and England for the control of the American continent, his theme is so closely allied to his own countrymen that it must always have a special interest for them and for the people of Canada, upon the early history and settlement of which country he has thrown so much light, and in regard to which he has aroused such great attention. Notwithstanding physical infirmities, he lived to complete his work, and to bring his series of historical narratives down to the year 1760, when Canada passed with the death of Montcalm from the hands of the French to be ruled by the nation that had fought more than half a century for its possession.

The remarkable series of histories grouped under the general title of "France and England in North America" may truly be termed the life work of their gifted author. He was but a youth of eighteen at Harvard College when he conceived the plan of writing a history of the French and Indian Wars, and his vacations at that time were passed adventurously and in a way which familiarized him with scenes in which the actors in his historical drama had moved. In the year 1846 he made with a friend his notable journey across the continent, to the desert plains and mountains and the Indian camps of the far West. "I went," says the author in the preface to the fourth edition of "The Oregon Trail," "as a student, to prepare for a literary undertaking of which the plan was already formed. My business was observation, and I was willing to pay dearly for the opportunity of exercising it." He camped among the Sioux Indians, listened to Indian legends, and studied Indian customs, but paid dearly indeed for the opportunity, for he became through the exposure an invalid for life.

"The Oregon Trail," an autobiographical narrative of the journey, was first published in 1847 in the Knickerbocker Magazine; and four years later the author gave to the world his first historical work, "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," pronounced by the eminent historian, Dr. John Fiske, "one of the most brilliant and fascinating books that has ever been written by any historian since the days of Herodotus." From that year until the completion of his work with the publication of "A Half Century of Conflict" in 1892, he occupied himself with the preparation of his series of historical narratives, "France and England in North America," laboriously searching through the French archives and elsewhere for his authorities, and dictating to an amanuensis at such times as the condition of his health would permit. The authorities he collected from the large number of documents and letters examined fill seventy folio volumes of manuscript, and are in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The wealth of material was selected from immense accumulations in France, England, and America, mostly unpublished and in manuscript. Personal visits had to be made to the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies, the Archives de la Guerre, and the Archives Nationals at Paris, and the Public Record Office and the British Museum in London, to obtain manuscript copies, it being necessary to have the authorities constantly at hand. The colonial records of Massachusetts, New York, and other States were also carefully examined.

The initial volume of the series, "Pioneers of France in the New World," was published in 1865. It is divided into two parts. I. The Huguenots in Florida. II. Champlain and his Associates. He described the subject of the proposed series as the attempt of Feudalism, Monarchy, and Rome to dominate the American continent, the rise and growth of North America, and the conflict of nations, races, and principles for its mastery. He had for the scenes of his great historical pictures the whole United States and Canada, from Quebec to Florida and Louisiana, and from Massachusetts to the Western Frontier. In the preface to "Pioneers of France in the New World" Parkman epitomized his purpose in a passage which was given a place of honor in Edmund Clarence Stedman's "Library of American Literature." He said:—

"New France was all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the lank, lean body would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked itself with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seignories and hordes of savage retainers. Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was strengthening and widening, with slow but steadfast growth, full of blood and muscle,—a body without a head. Each had its strength, each its weakness, each its own modes of vigorous life: but the one was fruitful, the other barren; the one instinct with hope, the other darkening with shadows of despair. By name, local position, and character, one of these communities of freemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of this antagonism,—Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France.… The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt.… Borne down by numbers from without, wasted by corruption from within, New France fell at last; and out of her fall grew revolutions whose influence to this hour is felt through every nation of the civilized world. The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its departed shades they rise upon us from their graves in strange, romantic guise. Again their ghostly campfires seem to burn, and the fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the sky. Stick was the domain which France conquered for civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil."

Mr. Parkman did not at once achieve popularity, but his "Pioneers of France" received cordial appreciation and even aroused enthusiasm among writers and critics. The tributes to this and subsequent works are not surpassed if equalled by those accorded to any previous writer. "In vigor and pointedness of description, Mr. Parkman may be counted superior to Irving," said the New York Tribune. The London Athenæum accorded him "a place alongside of the greatest historians whose works are English classics." The late George William Curtis referred to his theme as "a subject which Mr. Parkman has made as much his own as Motley the 'Dutch Republic,' or Macaulay the 'English Revolution.'" "He has taken," said The Spectator, "musty records, skeletons of facts, dry bones of barest history, and breathed on them that they might live." His books have been pronounced "as fascinating as any of Scott's novels;" he has been termed "Easily the first of living historians;" his descriptions of Indian life have been described as unsurpassed, and his sketches of lake and forest scenery praised as "of exquisite beauty."

"Pioneers of France in the New World" was followed in 1867 by "The Jesuits in North America." "Few passages of history," said the author, "are more striking than those which record the efforts of the earlier French Jesuits to convert the Indians. Full as they are of dramatic and philosophic interest, bearing strongly on the political destinies of America, and closely involved with the history of its native population, it is wonderful that they have been left so long in obscurity."

The historian, in this as in all his works, endeavored to write with the utmost fairness, basing all his conclusions on authorities and documents. In the preface to a later work, "A Half Century of Conflict," he says: "The statements of secondary writers have been accepted only when found to conform to the evidence of contemporaries whose writings have been sifted with the greatest care. As extremists on each side have charged me with favoring the other, I hope I have been unfair to neither."

The third volume in the series, "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West," appeared in 1869, and embodied the exploits and adventures of the first European explorers of the Valley of the Mississippi, the efforts of the French to secure the whole interior of the Continent, the attempt of La Salle to find a westward passage to India, his colony on the Illinois, his scheme of invading Mexico, his contest with the Jesuits, and his assassination by his own followers. The leading personages in this remarkable narrative are the intrepid Cavelier de la Salle, Henri de Tonty, his lieutenant, Hennepin, the historian of the expedition, Joliet and Marquette, the explorers of the Mississippi, etc. This volume is of especial value and interest to the people of the Northwest, giving, as it does, the early history of their own homes.

Five years elapsed before the author was able to complete the fourth volume of the series, "The Old Régime in Canada," which was published in 1874. In the preface he quotes De Tocqueville, who said: "The physiognomy of a government can best be judged by its colonies, for there its characteristic traits usually appear larger and more distinct. When I wish to judge of the spirit and the faults of the administration of Louis XIV., I must go to Canada. Its deformity is there seen as through a microscope." Mr. Parkman, in "The Old Régime in Canada," portrayed the attempt of the monarchical administration of France to make good its hold on the North American continent. "The means of knowing the Canada of the past," wrote Mr. Parkman, "are ample. The pen was always busy in this outpost of the old monarchy. The king and the minister demanded to know everything; and officials of high and low degree, soldiers and civilians, friends and foes, poured letters, despatches, and memorials, on both sides of every question, into the lap of the government." Among the strikingly important events treated of in this work are the Jesuit Missions to Onondaga, the Holy Wars of Montreal, the heroic death of Dollard and his companions at Long Saut, the foundation of the Laval Seminary, the chastisement of the Mohawks, the importation of wives for the Canada emigrants, the transplantation of feudalism into Canada, the development of trade and industry in New France, etc.

An entire volume of the series is devoted to the Life of Count Frontenac, the great French governor of Canada. "Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV." was issued in 1877. Parkman describes him in the preface as "the most remarkable man who ever represented the crown of France in the New World. He grew with every emergency and rose equal to every crisis. Under the rule of Frontenac occurred the first serious collision of the great rival Powers.… The present volume will show how valiantly, and for a time how successfully, New France battled against a fate which her own organic fault made inevitable. Her history is a great and significant drama, enacted among untamed forests, with a distant gleam of courtly splendor and the regal pomp of Versailles." A large portion of the volume is devoted to the warfare between the French and English, including the Iroquois Invasion, the attack on Schenectady, the unsuccessful Massachusetts attack on Quebec under Sir William Phips, the border warfare against New England, and the war in Acadia.

With the possibility that he might not live to complete his design, Mr. Parkman passed over the period between 1700 and 1748, and for seven years devoted himself to the preparation of Montcalm and Wolfe, the longest of his works, issued in two volumes, in 1884. His popularity had been, since the publication of "Pioneers of France," constantly increasing, but "Montcalm and Wolfe" at once directed universal attention to his writings, and gave him a greater reputation than he had achieved by all the previous volumes of the series. The subject, a great one, had never before received the study and research given to it by Parkman. He visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in connection with the contest took place, examined documents in the archives and libraries of France and England, great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, etc., had access through the permission of the present Marquis de Montcalm to all the letters written by General Montcalm to members of his family in France, searched the voluminous records of the colonial history of New York and Pennsylvania, and used in the preparation of the work a large amount of unpublished material, the papers copied in France alone exceeding six thousand folio pages of manuscript. He began the work with sketches of the condition of England and France and the Colonies in the eighteenth century (1745), treated of the conflict for the West, the conflict for Acadia, the colony of Virginia under Dinwiddie, and the defeat of Washington at Fort Necessity, the death of Braddock, the removal of the Acadians, the expedition against Crown Point, Shirley and the Border War in 1755-1756, and the arrival of Montcalm, the first volume concluding with chapters on the massacre at Fort William Henry.

The second volume opened with a description of the events in the years 1757-1758, sketched the character of Intendant Bigot, discussed Pitt and Newcastle, described the Siege of Louisbourg, the destruction of Gaspé by Wolfe, the death of Howe at Ticonderoga, the expedition of Bradstreet against Ticonderoga, the evacuation of Fort Duquesne, and Governor Vaudreuil's jealousy of Montcalm. More than half of the volume is devoted to the expedition against Quebec under Wolfe, the capture of the Heights of Abraham, the death of Montcalm and Wolfe, the fall of Quebec, and the description of the ruins of the town, the volume closing with chapters on the Fall of Canada and the Peace of Paris.

The work was reviewed in the United States, in Canada, and in England as a masterpiece of military history and the first authentic, full, sustained, and worthy narrative of these momentous events and extraordinary men.

The author's physical condition greatly retarded the completion of his labor; but in 1892, fifty years after he had planned his history, he was able to finish his task with the sixth part of the series, "A Half Century of Conflict," in two volumes, the preparation of which had been put aside, as previously stated, in order that he might write the work which he considered of the utmost importance to his design, "Montcalm and Wolfe." "A Half Century of Conflict" covers the years 1700 to 1748, and makes the series form a continuous history of the efforts of France to occupy and control the American Continent. The importance of the at one time almost unhoped for completion of this great literary enterprise received due attention on all sides.

"The completion of this history," said the New York Times, "is an event that should awaken interest wherever historical genius can be appreciated. Since Prescott, Motley, and Bancroft, Francis Parkman alone has thoroughly sustained American reputation in this field. He has not only sustained, but has measurably increased that reputation, for his work ranks with the most brilliant and lasting historical undertakings that have marked the past fifty years. The charm of his narrative is not greater than his scholarship, the rare importance of his theme not greater than the sustained interest with which he has carried it forward to completion."

"We doubt not," said the Atlantic Monthly, "that we express the feeling of the whole English-speaking world of literature when we congratulate the author upon the completion of the imperishable monument which commemorates his own noble endeavor and the glory of the race to which he belongs. It is rare indeed that a literary project conceived in youth is so comprehensive in its character, and is pursued so steadfastly to its final achievement after nearly fifty years of toil, under discouragements of physical privation induced by the very devotion which led the young author at the outset to turn his back upon civilized life, and to cast in his lot for a time with the race whose ancestors bore so conspicuous a part in the history which he was to unfold."

The Century Magazine, in commemoration of the event, published a "Note on the Completion of Mr. Parkman's Work," by Edward Eggleston, and an Essay, "Francis Parkman," by James Russell Lowell, undertaken by him at the request of the Editor of the Magazine, and left unfinished at his death. It was the last piece of writing prepared by Mr. Lowell for publication. "It is a great merit in Mr. Parkman," wrote Lowell, "that he has sedulously culled from his ample store of documents every warranted piece of evidence that could fortify or enliven his narrative, so that we at least come to know the actors in his various dramas as well as the events in which they shared. And thus the curiosity of the imagination and that of the understanding are altogether satisfied. We follow the casualties of battle with the intense interest of one who has friends or acquaintance there. Mr. Parkman's familiarity also with the scenery of his narratives is so intimate, his memory of the eye is so vivid, as almost to persuade us that ourselves have seen what he describes. We forget ourselves, to swim in the canoe down rivers that flow out of one primeval silence to lose themselves in another, or to thread those expectant solitudes of forest (insuetum nemus) that seem listening with stayed breath for the inevitable axe, and then launch our birchen egg-shells again on lakes that stretch beyond vision into the fairyland of conjecture. The world into which we are led touches the imagination with pathetic interest. It is mainly a world of silence and of expectation, awaiting the masters who are to subdue it and to fill it with the tumult of human life, and of almost more than human energy."

Mr. Eggleston, in his Century Magazine article, said: "It is possible that the historian of the last quarter of the nineteenth century in America will find few events more notable than the completion of the work of Mr. Francis Parkman,—that series of historical narratives, now at last grown to one whole, in which the romantic story of the rise, the marvellous expansion, and the ill-fated ending of the French power in North America is for the first time adequately told. Since its charms have been set before us in Mr. Parkman's picturesque pages, it is easy to understand that it is one of the finest themes that ever engaged the pen of a historian. But before a creative spirit had brooded upon it, while it yet lay formless and void, none but a man of original genius could have discovered a theme fit for a master in the history of a remote and provincial failure. And yet in no episode of human history is the nature of man seen in more varied action than in this story of the struggles of France and England in the new world.… I do not believe that the literature of America can show any historical composition at once so valuable and so delightful as the two volumes entitled 'Montcalm and Wolfe,' with which the whole work culminates."

The Nation, reviewing "A Half Century of Conflict," termed the work "the completion of a memorable undertaking. The task was one of the most important to which an American historian could devote his pen. Mr. Parkman's painstaking research has earned him a permanent place in the front rank of American writers of history, while the brilliancy of the style in which his thought is clothed imparts a charm to his narrative unsurpassed by that of Prescott or Motley. He may well look back with satisfaction on the stately series of volumes in which he has narrated the great attempt to plant on American soil the civilization and institutions of royal France,—a drama heroic and tragic enough to claim the admiration of those who most sincerely rejoice that it ended in essential failure."

"If we have objected to nothing in these histories," wrote Mr. W. D. Howells, in a review of Parkman's finished works, "it is because we have no fault to find with them. They appear to us the fruit of an altogether admirable motive directing indefatigable industry, and they present the evidence of thorough research and thoughtful philosophization.… Whatever may be added to his labors, they will remain undisturbed as thorough, beautiful, and true."

Constantly engaged as Mr. Parkman was in the examination of documents, letters, and archives bearing on the subject of his works, new material not at hand when the histories were first penned was at various times discovered, necessitating new editions of several of his works with important revisions and additions.

The new edition of "The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada," published in 1870, was enlarged to two volumes, a large amount of additional material having come to light, notably the Bouquet and Haldimand papers added to the manuscript collections of the British Museum. Although originally published prior to "France and England in North America," this work forms a sequel to that series.

The edition of "Pioneers of France in the New World" published in 1885 included the results of new documentary evidence, and a more exact knowledge of the localities connected with the French occupation of Florida, acquired from a special visit made by Mr. Parkman to that region.

A new edition of "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West" appeared in 1878 with very important additions, derived from the Margry collection of documents relating to La Salle and the narrative of his companion Joutel. Although the new material confirmed nearly every statement made in the first edition, it added new facts and threw new light on the character of La Salle, so that the author found it desirable to rewrite the work and to add a map of the country traversed by the explorers.

A revised edition of "The Old Régime in Canada" was published in 1893. When this work was first written, the author was unable to obtain access to indispensable papers relating to the rival claimants of Acadia, La Tour and D'Aunay, and therefore deferred treating the subject. These papers afterwards came to hand, and the missing chapters, embracing fifty pages, were written and included in the new edition under the title of "The Feudal Chiefs of Acadia." This edition also contains other additional matter.

Mr. Parkman's death occurred Nov. 8, 1893, a little more than a year after the completion of his work. It is a matter of congratulation that not only did he live to finish his undertaking, but that he was able to revise or rewrite such of his earlier works as required it because of the discovery of new material.

At a special meeting held shortly after Mr. Parkman's death by the Massachusetts Historical Society, to which he gave his manuscripts and autobiography, the latter afterwards printed in The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, the following minute was adopted:—

"The members of the Massachusetts Historical Society would relieve the sadness with which they enter upon their records the loss by death of their honored and eminent associate, Francis Parkman, by assigning to him the highest awards of ability, fidelity, and signal success as an American historian. He had won at home and abroad that place of chiefest honor. The work which he has wrought was one of freshness, reserved, because it had been seeking and waiting for him. And it came to him with all its attractions and exactions, finding in him the most rare and richly combined qualities of genius, aptitude, taste, and unique sympathetic fitness, to turn its romances, heroisms, and enterprises, with the enrichments of character and grace, into history. Nor would we fail to express our respectful and admiring estimate of the impressiveness of his character, of his noble manliness, his gentle mien and ways, and the patient perseverance of his spirit in its triumphing over physical infirmities."

At the memorial services held at Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, Dec. 7, 1893, President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University spoke as follows:—

"How remarkable is his work when we consider that he had only a few moments each day that he could devote to study! We draw from his life the same lesson as from that of Darwin. Not more than twenty minutes at a time could Darwin devote himself to his work, and rarely more than twice each day; yet see the store of knowledge he has opened up to us. With Parkman it was the same. Rarely could he study over half an hour at a time, yet left us a great monument.

"His ideal manhood was the highest and purest. It was this that made the tone of his writing so ennobling and uplifting. Above all things he abhorred fanaticism and intolerance, and very naturally, after depicting the physical and moral sufferings in the new world.

"His life was a noble lesson to students, particularly in the steadfast sticking to duty to the very last. He never appeared in public. He did not love prominence. His influence was quiet and subtle. But his name will remain long in human memory."

Among the speakers was Dr. John Fiske, who said,—

"Some thirty years ago, there appeared a history of Pontiac. It at once attracted attention because it made real men of the Indians and gave a true insight into their real character and importance in history. It was because Parkman showed a full knowledge of them that he first got hold of the world. He was more powerful than Prescott because he was true to life.

"He was a great historian because coupled with his knowledge were a philosophic insight and a poetic instinct. We can be thankful to heaven for sending us such a scholar, artist, and genius before it was too late.

"Parkman is the most American of all our historians because he deals with purely American history, but at the same time he is a historian for all mankind and all time, one of the greatest that ever lived."

The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, March, 1894, contained an appreciative article on Francis Parkman by James Schouler, the prominent law-writer, and author of "A Constitutional History of the United States." Mr. Schouler said,—

"The illustrious scholar and historian whose death we have deplored so recently, found physical drawbacks to his work to hinder and discourage. But all the greater is his meed of success because he surmounted them. His life was, on the whole, a happy one, and rounded out in rare conformity to its appointed task; he passed the Psalmist's full limit of years, as few of our English-speaking historians have done; and, however slow or painful might have been his progress, he completed in his riper years the great enterprise which he had projected in early life. Like one of those fair roses which in hours of recreation he so fondly cultivated, his literary reputation has lingered in full blossom, dispersing its delicate fragrance and beauty among all beholders."

The following tribute is from the pen of E. Irenæus Stevenson, in Harper's Weekly:—

"In Parkman's hand, history charms us as only the finer fiction can charm. Clear, sober, and elegant in his style, a natural artist in his diction, he gave picturesqueness, life, movement, to what he wished to set before his reader. The child and adult reader alike find him acceptable. He sacrificed nothing to mere literary effect,—sincerity was of his essence. Passages in his books linger in one's memory like chords of grave music; but not as if the lamp and premeditation had enabled them to be put into the page. To Americans his works are of thoroughly high interest and importance; and even in view of the impermanency of so much that is delightful, useful, and distinguished in the world's literature, it is not easy to fancy that they can be superseded."

The extracts given below are from a long review of Parkman's Life and Works, in The Nation:—

"The passing away of Francis Parkman leaves vacant the first place among American writers of history. His title to this pre-eminence has been increasingly recognized with every new contribution to the fascinating series of volumes which bear his name.… The historical reputation of Mr. Parkman—in a considerable degree contrasted with that of Prescott and Motley, and very strikingly in contrast with that of Bancroft—is seen to be one which steadily grows with more intimate acquaintance with his work. That this is the case is due not so much to the dignity of his theme and its aptitude for splendid workmanship upon it, though his theme lacks nothing in this regard, as to the personal qualities which Mr. Parkman himself brought to his undertaking,—his absolute sincerity, his painstaking perseverance, his fine moral sense, his judicial equipoise, his wholesome, uncloistered sympathy with nature and with outdoor things, his self-repression, and his chaste, unexaggerating, conscientious literary taste and skill. The result is that we have in the volumes of Mr. Parkman the most graphic and most truthful of all our American historical writings, and the ones likely longest to retain a place not alone on library shelves, but in living contact with the eyes and hearts of men."

Critics and reviewers of Parkman's works have been fond of pointing out that they read like romances, and are more fascinating than novels, and readers have not found such phrases misplaced. It may be added that Parkman has influenced writers of fiction and inclined several to select themes from his own chosen field. One of the novelists who have paid tribute to the great historian is Mary Hartwell Catherwood, author of "The Story of Tonty," "The Lady of Fort St. John," etc. She says: "The humble disciple of a great man has always some timidity in approaching him or claiming any share of his attention. I have often wished I lived in the neighborhood of Francis Parkman, and might carry a flower to his door every day and ask about his health, and once in a while let loose upon him all that flood of questions which constantly rises in the mind of a student. The prime fascination of his books, beyond their lucid style, their compact form, their glow and breadth of forest life, their presentation of transplanted Latin men and aboriginal savage as each existed, is their reliability. When you have sifted a dozen contradictory records, you may turn to him and find that he has been through much more labor before you, and long ago from just conclusions wrested the truth. There is scarcely a day in one's life when his histories are not turned to as handbooks. What a loss if he had never written them!"

In his preface to "The Refugees," the author, Dr. Conan Doyle, says: "No man can, without flagrant injustice, write upon the end of the seventeenth century at the French Court, without acknowledging his indebtedness to Miss Julia Pardoe, nor can he treat American history of the same date without owing much to Mr. Francis Parkman."

And the popular writer of boys' books, G. A. Henty, in his preface to "With Wolfe in Canada," names as one of the two sources from which he derived "all the historical details of the war," "the excellent work entitled 'Montcalm and Wolfe,' by Mr. Francis Parkman."

It has been frequently suggested that the best and most enduring memorial to the great historian would be an adequately illustrated edition of the noble works the preparation of which occupied almost his entire life. The suggestions have been warmly seconded, and have met with favor everywhere, and it is understood that the publication of such an edition will be begun in the near future.

All of Parkman's works are published by Messrs. LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Boston.

The Works of Francis Parkman

FOOTNOTES

1. The article cites the release of the revised third part of France and England in North America as 1878. However, the Tenth Edition of The Discovery of the West, published 1878, is based on the original edition. The Eleventh Edition, published 1879, is the revised edition.

2. The article cites the release of the revised fourth part of France and England in North America as 1893. There was no edition of Part Four released in 1893. The twenty-sixth edition, released in 1892, is based on the original edition of Part Four. The earliest revised edition was released in 1894. The Edition released in 1894 says "Revised, with Additions." The only copyright date in the 1894 edition is 1874. The 1895 edition added Copyright, 1893 to the copyright page.

The Oregon Trail

(1849)

The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada

(1851)

Revised

(1870)

Part

FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA

1

Pioneers of France in the New World

(1865)

1

Revised

(1885)

2

The Jesuits in North America in the seventeenth century

(1867)

3

The Discovery of the West

(1869)

3

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West    ¹

(1879)

4

The Old Régime in Canada

(1874)

4

Revised ²

(1894)

5

Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV.

(1877)

6

A Half Century of Conflict

(1892)

6

Volume 1

6

Volume 2

7

Montcalm and Wolfe

(1884)

OTHERS

Vassall Morton

(1856)

The Book of Roses

(1866)

Historic Handbook of the Northern Tour

(1885)

Transcriber's Notes

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to PROJECT GUTENBERG'S production of this biographical sketch and list of the works of Francis Parkman. Little, Brown, and Company published this informational pamphlet in 1896 to promote their latest releases of Francis Parkman's work.

Scanned pages of the original pamphlet may be found on the Hathitrust web site. We used the copy courtesy of the University of California to proofread this transcription.

The table of The Works of Francis Parkman was added by this transcriber.

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Table of Contents

Francis Parkman

Francis Parkman.

The Works of Francis Parkman

Transcriber's Notes

Introduction

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