The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820-1880

This book examines why several American literary and intellectual icons found themselves to be pioneering scholars and lifelong students of the Hispanic world.The author asserts that these gifted Americans focused on the Hispanic world that they might shape their own country's identity after Independence and the War 1812, a crucial time for the young republic, and that they found inspiration in a most unlikely place: the seat of the collapsing Spanish empire.

Iván Jaksic is a Professor at the Institute of History, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Director of the Stanford University Program in Santiago.  He is also the author of Andrés Bello: Scholarship and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Latin America.