Ian Jacobs

I was born in Suffolk, a county of low rolling hills and an austerely beautiful North Sea coast, an enormous contrast with the mountains and tropical coasts of Mexico, my adopted second country. I am a linguist (First class degree in Spanish and French from the University of Cambridge), turned historian (PhD from Cambridge), turned publisher, finally reborn as a historian. I won a national Spanish competition aged 18, and was a scholar and Bye-Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. My book about the Mexican Revolution in the state of Guerrero (University of Texas Press, 1982) is still widely cited and assigned in undergraduate classes in Mexico. My publishing career specialized in scholarly reference works, and later college textbooks, in art, music, history, archaeology, economics, and the life sciences. The Dictionary of Art (Macmillan, 1996, 34 vols.) won many awards, including the Dartmouth Medal of the American Library Association, the George Wittenborn Award for Excellence in Art Publishing, and the Wheatley medal for an outstanding index. My work kept me in touch with the world of scholarship. It was the archaeologist David Grove who suggested that I study Guerrero’s early history. So, in 2016 I returned to my own personal corner of Mexico.