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Washington Irving (1783-1859) - pseudonyms: Dietrich Knickerbocker, Jonathan Oldstyle, Geoffrey Crayon |
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American author, short story writer, essayist, poet, travel book writer, biographer, and columnist. Washington Irving has been called the father of the American short story. He is best known for 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' in which the schoolmaster Ichabold Crane meets with a headless horseman, and 'Rip Van Winkle,' about a man who falls asleep for 20 years. "I am an old traveller; I have read somewhat, heard and seen more, and dreamt more than all. My brain is filled, therefore, with all kinds of odds and ends. In travelling, these heterogeneous matters have become shaken up in my mind, as the articles are apt to be in an ill-packed traveling trunk; so that when I attempt to draw forth a fact, I cannot determine whether I have read, heard, or dreamt it; and I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories. " ('To the Reader,' in Tales of a Traveler by Washington Irving, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1865, pp. 9-10 ) Washington Irving was born in New York City, the youngest of 11 children. "The house in which I was born," he recalled later, "was No. 131 William-street, about half-way between John and Fulton streets. Within a very few weeks after my birth the family moved into a house nearly opposite, which my father had recently purhased; it was No. 128. . . ." (quoted in Washington Irving: The Definitive Biography of America's First Bestselling Author by Brian Jay Jones, New York: Arcade Publishing, 2011) His father, William Irving, was a wealthy merchant, born in the Orkney Islands. Sarah (née Sanders), his mother, was the granddaughter of an English clergyman. According to a story, George Washington met Irving in 1789 in a shop, and gave his blessing on his namesake. Irving never forgot the moment. In the years to come he would write one of his greatest works, The Life of George Washington (1855-59). Early in his life Irving developed a passion for books. He
read Robinson Crusoe, Sinbad the Sailor, and The
World Displayed; or, A Curious Cllection of Voyages and Travels. He
studied law privately in the offices of Henry Masterton (1798),
Brockholst Livingston (1801), and John Ogde Hoffman (1802), but
practiced only briefly. From 1804 to 1806 Irving traveled widely around Europe, where he visited Marseilles and Genoa, saw the famous English naval officer, Nelson, in Sicily, and met Washington Allston, the painter, in Rome. After returning to the United States, Irving was admitted to New York bar in 1806. He was a partner with his brothers in the family hardware business in New York and Liverpool, England, and a representative of the business in England until it collapsed in 1818. Irving felt that business is a soul-killing way to live. He loved to go to the theater and to the opera and even played with the idea of becoming a dramatist. During the war of 1812 Irving served as a military aide to New York Governor Tompkins in the U.S. Army. Irving's career as a writer started in journals and newspapers. He contributed to Morning Chronicle (1802-03), which was edited by his brother Peter, and published Salmagundi (1807-08), writing in collaboration with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding. From 1812 to 1814 he was an editor of Analectic magazine in Philadelphia and New York. A personal tragedy cast its shadow on Irving's success in
social life and literature. He was engaged to be married to Matilda
Hoffman,
who died at the age of seventeen, in 1809. Later he wrote in a private
letter, addressed to Mrs. Forster, as an answer to her inquiry why he
had not been married: "For years I could not talk on the subject of
this hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image
was continually before me, and I dreamt of her incessantly." (Washington Irving by Charles Dudley Warner, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1881, p. 64) Throughout his career Irving
used a variety of pseudonyms to hide his identity (most notably
Jonathan Oldstyle, Diedrich Knickerbocker, Geoffrey Crayon, and Fray
Antonio Agapida), which has sparked curiosity about his personal life,
but there is not real evidence that he was a "gay bachelor." Irving's comic history of the Dutch regime in New York, A
History of New York (1809), was published under the name of
the imaginary "Dietrich Knickerbocker," who was supposed to be an
eccentric Dutch-American scholar. It was one of the earliest fantasies
of history. The name Knickerbocker was later used to identify the first
American school of writers, the Knickerbocker Group, of which
Irving was a leading
figure. The book became part of New York folklore, and eventually Knickerbocker described any New Yorker who could
trace one's family to the original Dutch settlers. This burlesque of
life, set in New Amsterdam, was made into a Broadway production in 1938
under the title Knickerbocker Holiday,
perhaps best remembered for 'September Song'. The music was composed by
Kurt Weil, the lyrics were written by Maxwell Anderson. John Huston
sang and danced on a peg leg in the role of Governor Pieter Stuyvesant.
Irving's success
continued with The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20),
a collection of stories, which allowed him to become a full-time
writer. The stories were heavily influenced by the German folktales. In
Bracebridge Hall (1822), the sequel of The Sketch
Book, Irving
invites the reader to ramble gently with him at
the Hall: "While sojourning in this stronghold of old fashions, it is
my intention to make occasional sketches of the scenes and characters
before me. I would have it understood, however, that I am not writing a
novel, and have nothing of
intricate plot, or marvelous adventure, to promise the reader." ('The Hall,' Bracebridge Hall, illustrated by Randolph Caldecott, arranged and engraved by J. D. Cooper, London: Macmillan & Co., 1887, p. 5) After the death of his mother, Irving decided to stay in Europe, where he remained for seventeen years, from 1815 to 1832. He lived in Dresden (1822-23), London (1824) and Paris (1825). In England Irving had a romantic liaison with Mary Shelley. Eventually he settled in Spain, working there for financial reasons for the U.S. Embassy in Madrid (1826-29). In 1829-32 Irving was a secretary to the American Legation under Martin Van Buren. During his stay in Spain, he wrote Columbus (1828), Conquest of Granada (1829), and The Companions of Columbus (1831), all based on careful historical research. In 1829 he moved to London and published Alhambra (1832), concerning the history and the legends of Moorish Spain. Among his literary friends were Mary Shelley and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1832, Irving returned to New York to an enthusiastic welcome
as the first American author to have achieved international fame. He
toured the southern and western United States and wrote The Cayon
Miscellany (1835) and A Tour on the Prairies (1835),
an account of a journey, which extended from Fort Gibson, at that time
a frontier post of the Far West, to the Cross Timbers in what is now
Oklahoma. His fellow-travelers included Henry Leavitt Ellsworth
(1791-1858), who also wrote an interesting narrative of the tour, and
Charles Joseph Latrobe (1801-1875), whom Irving described as a "man of
a thousand occupations; a botanist, a geologist, a hunter of beetles
and butterflies, a musical amateur, a sketcher of no mean pretensions,
in short, a complete virtuoso; added to which, he was a very
indefatigable, if not always a very successful, sportsman." (A Tour on the Prairies by Washington Irving, Paris: A. and W. Galignani and Co., 1835, p. 3) From 1836 to 1842, Irving lived at Sunnyside manor house,
Tarrytown-on-Hudson. When his old friend, Charles Dickens, visited
America, he saw also Irving and celebrated their reunion in New York with a speech at the dinner at the City Hotel:
"There is in this city a gentleman who at the reception of one of my
books — I well remember it was the 'Old Curiosity Shop' — wrote to me in
England a letter so generous, so affectionate, and so manly, that if I
had written the book under every circumstance of disappointment, of
discouragement, and difficulty, instead of the reverse, I should have
found in the receipt of that letter my best and most happy reward. I
answered him, and he answered me, and so we kept shaking hands
autographically, as if no ocean rolled between us. I came here eager to see him, and," laying his hand upon Irving's shoulder,
"here he sits. I need not tell you how happy and delighted I am to see
him here to-night in this capacity." (A Stray Leaf from the Correspondence of Washington Irving and Charles Dickens by William Loring Andrews, New York: DeVinne Press, 1894, pp. 23-24) After working for three months on the History of the Conquest of Mexico, Irving found out that the famous historian William Prescott had decided to write a book on the same subject and abandoned his theme, saying in January 1839 a letter to Prescott: "I feel that I am but doing my duty in leaving one of the most magnificent themes in American history to be treated by one who will build up from it an enduring monument in the literature of our country." (The Life and Letters of Washington Irving by his nephew Pierre M. Irving, Vol. II, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1883, p. 224) Between the years 1842-45 Irving served as U.S. Ambassador in Spain. The appointment was sponsored by Daniel Webster, the Secretary of State. At the age of sixty-two Irving wrote to his friend Mrs M. H. Grinnell in America: "My heart yearns for home; and as I have now probably turned the last corner in life, and my remaining years are growing scanty in number, I begrudge every one that I am obliged to pass separated from my cottage and my kindred." (The Life and Letters of Washington Irving by his nephew Pierre M. Irving, Vol. III, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1883, p. 34) The last years of his life Irving spent in Tarrytown. In spite of his success, money remained a constant
worry and his family members lost much of his earnings in poor
investments. Moreover, Irving suffered from writers block and
battled a herpetic condition that periodically laid him up for months. From
1848 to 1859 he was President of Astor Library, later New York Public
Library. Irving's final major publications include Wolfert's Roost
(1855) and the five-volume The Life of George Washington. The two-volume, path-breaking
Mahomet and His
Successors (1850), "a book by a non-Muslim written for non-Muslims" as one reviewer called it, was a careful
presentation of the life,
beliefs, and character of Muhammad. Irving had already begun to draft the work in 1827; the original projected title was The Legendary Life of Mahomet.
The Prophet is portrayed as a man
of great genius and a sincere reformer, but whose "passion for the sex
had an influence over all his affairs. It is said that when in the
presence of a beautiful female, he was continually smoothing his brow
and adjusting his hair, as if anxious to appear to advantage." (The Life of Mahomet
by Washington Irving, published for the Continent of Europe by contract
with the author, Leipzig: Bernh. Tauchnitz, 1850, p. 264) Irving was one of the first
Westerners to write about Muhammad for a general audience. The book
remained in print over five decades. Washington Irving died in
Tarrytown on November 28, 1859. Just before retiring for
the night, the author had said: "Well, I must arrange my pillows for
another weary night! If this could only end?" (Last Words of Notable People: Final Words of More Than 3500 Noteworthy People Throughout History, compiled by William B. Brahms, Haddonfield, N.J.: Reference Desk Press, 2010, p. 331) Irving's major works were
published in 1860-61 in 21 volumes. He was the first American to earn a
living by his pen. For
six decades, he churned out books, and reviews, letters, and
essays for newspapers. As an essayist Irving was not interested in the meaning of nature like Emerson or self-inspection like Montaigne. He observed the vanishing pasts of old Europe, the riverside Creole villages of Louisiana, the old Pawnee hunting grounds of Oklahoma, and how ladies fashion moves from one extreme to the other. "Geoffrey Crayo" was his most prolific fictional mask. Irving once said: "There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity." (The Mutability of Literature' by Washington Irving, The Oxford Book of American Essays, chosen by Brander Matthews, New York: Oxford University Press, 1914, pp. 43-44) 'Rip Van Winkle,' Irving's best-known story, was included in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. It was based on a German folktale, set in the Dutch culture of Pre-Revolutionary War in New York State. Rip Van Winkle is a farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains. He meets there a group of dwarfs playing nine-pins. Rip helps a dwarf and is rewarded with a draught of liquor. He falls into an enchanted sleep. When he awakens, 20 years later, the world has changed. He is an old man with a long, white beard. Rip goes into town and finds everything changed. His wife is dead, his children are grown. The old man entertains the people with tales of the old days and his encounter with the dwarfs. The theme of the story dates back Diogenes Laertius's Epimenides (c. 200), in which Epimenides is sent by his father into the field to look for a sheep; he lies down in a cave and sleeps fifty-seven years. When awake, he goes on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short snap. Irving also drew from other German folktales in his short stories, among them The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. "The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge, when the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder." (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1896, p. 35) Irving's legend was probably based on a story by Karl Musäus (1735-1787), a German academic writer, who was among the first to collect local folktales. This story popularized the image of the headless horseman, and formed the basis for an operetta by Douglas Moore, The Headless Horseman, with libretto by Stephen Vincent Benét. The tale was filmed as the second half of Disney's animated movie The Adventures of Ichabold and Mr Toad (1949). Tim Burton's screen adaptation from 1999 partly changed the plot, typical for the director. Ichabold Crane, the protagonist, is a constable from New York, not a schoolteacher. He believes in rational methods of detection, and is sent to the farming community called Sleepy Hollow in upstate New York to investigate three recent murders. The townspeople know who the culprit is: a long-dead Hessian mercenary nicknamed the Headless Horseman who was killed during the Revolutionary War and buried in the Western Woods. For further reading: Sleepy Hollow as American Myth: Irving's Story Retold, Adapted and Cemented in Popular Culture by Steve A. Wiggins (2025); Washington Irving and the Fantasy of Masculinity: Escaping the Woman Within by Heinz Tschachler (2022); Washington Irving's Critique of American Culture: Sketching a Vision of World Citizenship by J. Woodrow McCree (2021); American Writers in Exile, edited by Jeff Birkenstein & Robert C. Hauhart (2015); 'Washington Irving in Muslim Translation: Revising the American "Mahomet"' by Jeffrey Einboden, in Translation and Literature, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring, 2009); Washington Irving and Spain: the Romantic Movement, the Re/creation of Islamic Andalusia and the Critical Reception by Celia M. Wallhead (2009); Washington Irving: an American Original by Brian Jay Jones (2008); The Original Knickerbocker: the Life of Washington Irving by Andrew Burstein (2007); U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790-1890 by Malini Johar Schueller (1998); Washington Irving: The Critical Reaction, ed. by James W. Tuttleton (1993); Critical Essays on Washington Irving by Ralph M. Aderman (1990); Adrift in the Old World: The Psychological Pilgrimage of Washington Irving by Jeffrey Rubin-Dosky (1988); Washington Irving by William L. Hedges (1965); The Life and Letters of Washington Irving by B.M. Irving (1967, 4 vols.; original edition 1862-64); The Life of Washington Irving by Stanley T. Williams (1935, 2 vols.) - Note 1: Among Irving's s friends in England was Sir Walter Scott. Note 2: In Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 the central character, Captain Yossarian, signs the censored letters of the soldiers with the name Washington Irving (or Irving Washington). See also: Mark Twain whose early short stories arouse from the various folk and humorous traditions. In Finnish: Irvingin novelli 'Rip Van Winkle' on suomennettu antologiassa Amerikkalaisia kertojia. Selected works:
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