"The History of the Conquest of Mexico and the Life of the Conqueror Fernando Cortes", by William H. Prescott. Complete in Two Volumes. Published by Peter Fenelon Collier, New York, 1898.

Hard boards, original red cloth [a little surface wear], gold lettering on spines, 6" x 8.1/2"; stamp of J. Griff Edwards on the endpapers of both volume, first 'Preface' page of the first volume and on the first 'Contents' page of the second volume; 467 + 490 pages, Index at the end of the second volume; a few illustrations on glossy paper, a little foxing the plates and the pages next to the plates [including frontis and title pages], very good condition

"For anyone interested in 'knowing' Mexico and the Mexicanos, this is "A MUST READ". Superbly researched from authoritative primary sources and compared/contrasted with the Conquest of Peru, the totally blind author William Prescott achieves a miraculous feat in this combination of 16th century European exploration and colonization of the New World, aka Western Hemisphere." [from a review]

William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859) was an American historian and Hispanist, who is widely recognized by historiographers to have been the first American scientific historian. Despite suffering from serious visual impairment, which at times prevented him from reading or writing for himself, Prescott became one of the most eminent historians of 19th century America. Prescott has become one of the most widely translated American historians, and was an important figure in the development of history as a rigorous academic discipline. Historians admire Prescott for his exhaustive, careful, and systematic use of archives, his accurate recreation of sequences of events, his balanced judgments and his lively writing style. He was primarily focused on political and military affairs, largely ignoring economic, social, intellectual, and cultural forces that in recent decades historians have focused on. Instead, he wrote narrative history, subsuming unstated causal forces in his driving storyline.

Provenance

From the library of J. Griff Edwards, Portsmouth, Virginia. His stamp is on the front endpaper, preface and contest page.

John Griff Edwards (1870-1912) belonged to the old established settler family in Virginia. His father and uncles served in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. The grandfather, LeRoy Griffin Edwards (1804-1866), was the president of the Confederate Convention of 1864. John's wife, Mrs. J. Griff Edwards founded and led the first of the United Confederate Choirs of America (1907). After that she was elected the 'Commander in Chief of the United Confederate Choirs.' In 1911 she published a volume titled "Echoes From Dixie A Collection of Songs Used in the South."

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