Washington Irving
Daguerreotype of Washington Irving (modern copy by Mathew Brady, original by John Plumbe)
Born	(1783-04-03)April 3, 1783 New York City, New York
Died	November 28, 1859(1859-11-28) (aged 76) Sunnyside, Tarrytown, New York
Occupation	Short story writer, essayist, biographer, magazine editor, diplomat
Literary movement	Romanticism
Signature

Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving also served as the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846.

He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. After moving to England for the family business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819. He continued to publish regularly—and almost always successfully—throughout his life, and completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death, at age 76, in Tarrytown, New York.

Irving, along with James Fenimore Cooper, was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving encouraged American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also admired by some European writers, including Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Francis Jeffrey, and Charles Dickens. As America's first genuine internationally best-selling author, Irving advocated for writing as a legitimate profession, and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Washington Irving's parents were William Irving, Sr., originally of Quholm, Shapinsay, Orkney, and Sarah (née Sanders), Scottish-English immigrants. They married in 1761 while William was serving as a petty officer in the British Navy. They had eleven children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Their first two sons, each named William, died in infancy, as did their fourth child, John. Their surviving children were: William, Jr. (1766), Ann (1770), Peter (1772), Catherine (1774), Ebenezer (1776), John Treat (1778), Sarah (1780), and Washington.^[1]

The Irving family settled in Manhattan, New York City, and was part of the city's small, vibrant merchant class when Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783,^[1] the same week city residents learned of the British ceasefire that ended the American Revolution; Irving’s mother named him after the hero of the revolution, George Washington.^[2] At age six, with the help of a nanny, Irving met his namesake, who was then living in New York after his inauguration as president in 1789. The president blessed young Irving,^[3] an encounter Irving later commemorated in a small watercolor painting, which still hangs in his home today.^[4] The Irvings lived at 131 William Street at the time of Washington Irving's birth. The family later moved across the street to 128 William St.^[5] Several of Washington Irving's older brothers became active New York merchants, and they encouraged their younger brother's literary aspirations, often supporting him financially as he pursued his writing career.

An uninterested student, Irving preferred adventure stories and drama and, by age fourteen, was regularly sneaking out of class in the evenings to attend the theater.^[6] The 1798 outbreak of yellow fever in Manhattan prompted his family to send him to healthier climes upriver, and Irving was dispatched to stay with his friend James Kirke Paulding in Tarrytown, New York. It was in Tarrytown that Irving became familiar with the nearby town of Sleepy Hollow, with its quaint Dutch customs and local ghost stories.^[7] Irving made several other trips up the Hudson as a teenager, including an extended visit to Johnstown, New York, where he passed through the Catskill mountain region, the setting for "Rip Van Winkle". "[O]f all the scenery of the Hudson", Irving wrote later, "the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination".^[8]

The 19-year old Irving began writing letters to the New York Morning Chronicle in 1802, submitting commentaries on the city's social and theater scene under the name of Jonathan Oldstyle. The name, which purposely evoked the writer's Federalist leanings,^[9] was the first of many pseudonyms Irving would employ throughout his career. The letters brought Irving some early fame and moderate notoriety. Aaron Burr, a co-publisher of the Chronicle, was impressed enough to send clippings of the Oldstyle pieces to his daughter, Theodosia, while writer Charles Brockden Brown made a trip to New York to recruit Oldstyle for a literary magazine he was editing in Philadelphia.^[10]

Concerned for his health, Irving's brothers financed an extended tour of Europe from 1804 to 1806. Irving bypassed most of the sites and locations considered essential for the development of an upwardly-mobile young man, to the dismay of his brother William. William wrote that, though he was pleased his brother's health was improving, he did not like the choice to "gallop through Italy... leaving Florence on your left and Venice on your right".^[11] Instead, Irving honed the social and conversational skills that would later make him one of the world's most in-demand guests.^[12] "I endeavor to take things as they come with cheerfulness", Irving wrote, "and when I cannot get a dinner to suit my taste, I endeavor to get a taste to suit my dinner".^[13] While visiting Rome in 1805, Irving struck up a friendship with the American painter Washington Allston,^[11] and nearly allowed himself to be persuaded into following Allston into a career as a painter. "My lot in life, however", Irving said later, "was differently cast".^[14]

First major writings[link]

Irving returned from Europe to study law with his legal mentor, Judge Josiah Ogden Hoffman, in New York City. By his own admission, he was not a good student, and barely passed the bar in 1806.^[15] Irving began actively socializing with a group of literate young men he dubbed "The Lads of Kilkenny".^[16] Collaborating with his brother William and fellow Lad James Kirke Paulding, Irving created the literary magazine Salmagundi in January 1807. Writing under various pseudonyms, such as William Wizard and Launcelot Langstaff, Irving lampooned New York culture and politics in a manner similar to today's Mad magazine.^[17] Salmagundi was a moderate success, spreading Irving's name and reputation beyond New York. In its seventeenth issue, dated November 11, 1807, Irving affixed the nickname "Gotham"—an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "Goat's Town"—to New York City.^[18]

The fictional "Diedrich Knickerbocker" from the frontispiece of A History of New-York, a wash drawing by Felix O. C. Darley

Portrait of Washington Irving by John Wesley Jarvis, from 1809

In late 1809, while mourning the death of his seventeen year old fiancée Matilda Hoffman, Irving completed work on his first major book, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), a satire on self-important local history and contemporary politics. Prior to its publication, Irving started a hoax akin to today's viral marketing campaigns; he placed a series of missing person adverts in New York newspapers seeking information on Diedrich Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian who had allegedly gone missing from his hotel in New York City. As part of the ruse, Irving placed a notice—allegedly from the hotel's proprietor—informing readers that if Mr. Knickerbocker failed to return to the hotel to pay his bill, he would publish a manuscript Knickerbocker had left behind.^[19]

Unsuspecting readers followed the story of Knickerbocker and his manuscript with interest, and some New York city officials were concerned enough about the missing historian that they considered offering a reward for his safe return. Riding the wave of public interest he had created with his hoax, Irving—adopting the pseudonym of his Dutch historian—published A History of New York on December 6, 1809, to immediate critical and popular success.^[20] "It took with the public", Irving remarked, "and gave me celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and uncommon in America".^[21] Today, the surname of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the fictional narrator of this and other Irving works, has become a nickname for Manhattan residents in general.^[22]

After the success of A History of New York, Irving searched for a job and eventually became an editor of Analectic magazine, where he wrote biographies of naval heroes like James Lawrence and Oliver Perry.^[23] He was also among the first magazine editors to reprint Francis Scott Key's poem "Defense of Fort McHenry", which would later be immortalized as "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the United States.^[24]

Like many merchants and New Yorkers, Irving originally opposed the War of 1812, but the British attack on Washington, D.C. in 1814 convinced him to enlist.^[25] He served on the staff of Daniel Tompkins, governor of New York and commander of the New York State Militia. Apart from a reconnaissance mission in the Great Lakes region, he saw no real action.^[26] The war was disastrous for many American merchants, including Irving's family, and in mid-1815 he left for England to attempt to salvage the family trading company. He remained in Europe for the next seventeen years.^[27]

Life in Europe[link]

[edit] The Sketch Book

The front page of The Sketch Book (1819)

Irving spent the next two years trying to bail out the family firm financially but was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy.^[28] With no job prospects, Irving continued writing throughout 1817 and 1818. In the summer of 1817, he visited the home of novelist Walter Scott, marking the beginning of a lifelong personal and professional friendship for both men.^[29] Irving continued writing prolifically—the short story "Rip Van Winkle" was written overnight while staying with his sister Sarah and her husband, Henry van Wart in Birmingham, England, a place that also inspired some of his other works.^[30] In October 1818, Irving's brother William secured for Irving a post as chief clerk to the United States Navy, and urged him to return home.^[31] Irving, however, turned the offer down, opting to stay in England to pursue a writing career.^[32]

In the spring of 1819, Irving sent to his brother Ebenezer in New York a set of essays that he asked be published as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The first installment, containing "Rip Van Winkle", was an enormous success, and the rest of the work would be equally successful: it was published over the course of 1819–1820 in seven installments in New York and in two volumes in London ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" would appear in the sixth issue of the New York edition and the second volume of the London edition).^[33]

Like many successful authors of this era, Irving struggled against literary bootleggers.^[34] In England, some of his sketches were reprinted in periodicals without his permission, an entirely legal practice as there was no international copyright law at the time. To prevent further piracy in Britain, Irving paid to have the first four American installments published as a single volume by John Miller in London. Irving appealed to Walter Scott for help procuring a more reputable publisher for the remainder of the book. Scott referred Irving to his own publisher, London powerhouse John Murray, who agreed to take on The Sketch Book.^[35] From then on, Irving would publish concurrently in the United States and England to protect his copyright, with Murray being his English publisher of choice.^[36]

Irving's reputation soared, and for the next two years, he led an active social life in Paris and England, where he was often feted as an anomaly of literature: an upstart American who dared to write English well.^[37]

[edit] Bracebridge Hall and Tales of a Traveller

Portrait of Irving in about 1820, attributed to Charles Robert Leslie

With both Irving and publisher John Murray eager to follow up on the success of The Sketch Book, Irving spent much of 1821 travelling in Europe in search of new material, reading widely in Dutch and German folk tales. Hampered by writer's block—and depressed by the death of his brother William—Irving worked slowly, finally delivering a completed manuscript to Murray in March 1822. The book, Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists, A Medley (the location was based loosely on Aston Hall, occupied by members of the Bracebridge family, near his sister's home in Birmingham) was published in June 1822.

The format of Bracebridge was similar to that of The Sketch Book, with Irving, as Crayon, narrating a series of more than fifty loosely connected short stories and essays. While some reviewers thought Bracebridge to be a lesser imitation of The Sketch Book, the book was well-received by readers and critics.^[38] "We have received so much pleasure from this book," wrote critic Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review, "that we think ourselves bound in gratitude . . . to make a public acknowledgement of it."^[39] Irving was relieved at its reception, which did much to cement his reputation with European readers.

Still struggling with writer's block, Irving traveled to Germany, settling in Dresden in the winter of 1822. Here he dazzled the royal family and attached himself to Mrs. Amelia Foster, an American living in Dresden with her five children.^[40] Irving was particularly attracted to Mrs. Foster's 18-year-old daughter Emily, and vied in frustration for her hand. Emily finally refused his offer of marriage in the spring of 1823.^[41]

He returned to Paris and began collaborating with playwright John Howard Payne on translations of French plays for the English stage, with little success. He also learned through Payne that the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was romantically interested in him, though Irving never pursued the relationship.^[42]

In August 1824, Irving published the collection of essays Tales of a Traveller—including the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker"—under his Geoffrey Crayon persona. "I think there are in it some of the best things I have ever written," Irving told his sister.^[43] But while the book sold respectably, Traveller largely bombed with critics, who panned both Traveller and its author. "The public have been led to expect better things," wrote the United States Literary Gazette, while the New-York Mirror pronounced Irving "overrated."^[44] Hurt and depressed by the book's reception, Irving retreated to Paris where he spent the next year worrying about finances and scribbling down ideas for projects that never materialized.^[45]

Spanish books[link]

While in Paris, Irving received a letter from Alexander Hill Everett on January 30, 1826. Everett, recently the American Minister to Spain, urged Irving to join him in Madrid,^[46] noting that a number of manuscripts dealing with the Spanish conquest of the Americas had recently been made public. Irving left for Madrid and enthusiastically began scouring the Spanish archives for colorful material.^[47]

The palace Alhambra, where Irving briefly resided in 1829, inspired one of his most colorful books.

With full access to the American consul's massive library of Spanish history, Irving began working on several books at once. The first offspring of this hard work, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, was published in January 1828. The book was popular in the United States and in Europe and would have 175 editions published before the end of the century.^[48] It was also the first project of Irving's to be published with his own name, instead of a pseudonym, on the title page.^[49] The Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada was published a year later,^[50] followed by Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus in 1831.^[51]

Irving's writings on Columbus are a mixture of history and fiction, a genre now called romantic history/historical fiction. Irving based them on extensive research in the Spanish archives, but also added imaginative elements aimed at sharpening the story. The first of these works is the source of the durable myth that medieval Europeans believed the Earth was flat.^[52] (See Myth of the Flat Earth.)

In 1829, Irving moved into Granada's ancient palace Alhambra, "determined to linger here", he said, "until I get some writings under way connected with the place".^[53] Before he could get any significant writing underway, however, he was notified of his appointment as Secretary to the American Legation in London. Worried he would disappoint friends and family if he refused the position, Irving left Spain for England in July 1829.^[54]

Secretary to the American legation in London[link]

Arriving in London, Irving joined the staff of American Minister Louis McLane. McLane immediately assigned the daily secretary work to another man and tapped Irving to fill the role of aide-de-camp. The two worked over the next year to negotiate a trade agreement between the United States and the British West Indies, finally reaching a deal in August 1830. That same year, Irving was awarded a medal by the Royal Society of Literature, followed by an honorary doctorate of civil law from Oxford in 1831.^[55]

Following McLane's recall to the United States in 1831 to serve as Secretary of Treasury, Irving stayed on as the legation's chargé d'affaires until the arrival of Martin Van Buren, President Andrew Jackson's nominee for British Minister. With Van Buren in place, Irving resigned his post to concentrate on writing, eventually completing Tales of the Alhambra, which would be published concurrently in the United States and England in 1832.^[56]

Irving was still in London when Van Buren received word that the United States Senate had refused to confirm him as the new Minister. Consoling Van Buren, Irving predicted that the Senate's partisan move would backfire. "I should not be surprised", Irving said, "if this vote of the Senate goes far toward elevating him to the presidential chair".^[57]

Return to America[link]

Washington Irving arrived in New York, after seventeen years abroad on May 21, 1832. That September, he accompanied the U.S. Commissioner on Indian Affairs, Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, along with companions Charles La Trobe^[58] and Count Albert-Alexandre de Pourtales, on a surveying mission deep in Indian Territory.^[59] At the completion of his western tour, Irving traveled through Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, where he became acquainted with the politician and novelist John Pendleton Kennedy.^[60]

Frustrated by bad investments, Irving turned to writing to generate additional income, beginning with A Tour on the Prairies, a work which related his recent travels on the frontier. The book was another popular success and also the first book written and published by Irving in the United States since A History of New York in 1809.^[61] In 1834, he was approached by fur magnate John Jacob Astor, who convinced Irving to write a history of his fur trading colony in the American Northwest, now known as Astoria, Oregon. Irving made quick work of Astor's project, shipping the fawning biographical account titled Astoria in February 1836.^[62]

During an extended stay at Astor's, Irving met the explorer Benjamin Bonneville, who intrigued Irving with his maps and stories of the territories beyond the Rocky Mountains.^[63] When the two met in Washington, D.C. several months later, Bonneville opted to sell his maps and rough notes to Irving for $1,000.^[64] Irving used these materials as the basis for his 1837 book The Adventures of Captain Bonneville.^[65]

These three works made up Irving's "western" series of books and were written partly as a response to criticism that his time in England and Spain had made him more European than American.^[66] In the minds of some critics, especially James Fenimore Cooper and Philip Freneau, Irving had turned his back on his American heritage in favor of English aristocracy.^[67] Irving's western books, particularly A Tour on the Prairies, were well-received in the United States,^[68] though British critics accused Irving of "book-making".^[69]

Irving acquired his famous home in Tarrytown, New York, known as Sunnyside, in 1835.

In 1835, Irving purchased a "neglected cottage" and its surrounding riverfront property in Tarrytown, New York. The house, which Irving named Sunnyside in 1841,^[70] would require constant repair and renovation over the next twenty years. With costs of Sunnyside escalating, Irving reluctantly agreed in 1839 to become a regular contributor to Knickerbocker magazine, writing new essays and short stories under the Knickerbocker and Crayon pseudonyms.^[71]

Irving was regularly approached by aspiring young authors for advice or endorsement, including Edgar Allan Poe, who sought Irving's comments on "William Wilson" and "The Fall of the House of Usher".^[72] Irving also championed America's maturing literature, advocating for stronger copyright laws to protect writers from the kind of piracy that had initially plagued The Sketch Book. Writing in the January 1840 issue of Knickerbocker, he openly endorsed copyright legislation pending in the U.S. Congress. "We have a young literature", Irving wrote, "springing up and daily unfolding itself with wonderful energy and luxuriance, which... deserves all its fostering care". The legislation did not pass.^[73]

Irving at this time also began a friendly correspondence with the English writer Charles Dickens, and hosted the author and his wife at Sunnyside during Dickens's American tour in 1842.^[74]

Minister to Spain[link]

In 1842, after an endorsement from Secretary of State Daniel Webster, President John Tyler appointed Irving as Minister to Spain.^[75] Irving was surprised and honored, writing, "It will be a severe trial to absent myself for a time from my dear little Sunnyside, but I shall return to it better enabled to carry it on comfortably".^[76]

While Irving hoped his position as Minister would allow him plenty of time to write, Spain was in a state of perpetual political upheaval during most of his tenure, with a number of warring factions vying for control of the twelve-year-old Queen Isabella II.^[77] Irving maintained good relations with the various generals and politicians, as control of Spain rotated through Espartero, Bravo, then Narvaez. However, the politics and warfare were exhausting, and Irving—homesick and suffering from a crippling skin condition—grew quickly disheartened:

With the political situation in Spain relatively settled, Irving continued to closely monitor the development of the new government and the fate of Isabella. His official duties as Spanish Minister also involved negotiating American trade interests with Cuba and following the Spanish parliament's debates over slave trade. He was also pressed into service by the American Minister to the Court of St. James's in London, Louis McLane, to assist in negotiating the Anglo-American disagreement over the Oregon border that newly-elected president James K. Polk had vowed to resolve.^[79]

Final years and death[link]

Irving's grave, marked by a flag, in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Returning from Spain in 1846, Irving took up permanent residence at Sunnyside and began work on an "Author's Revised Edition" of his works for publisher George Palmer Putnam. For its publication, Irving had made a deal that guaranteed him 12 percent of the retail price of all copies sold. Such an agreement was unprecedented at that time.^[80] On the death of John Jacob Astor in 1848, Irving was hired as an executor of Astor's estate and appointed, by Astor's will, as first chairman of the Astor library, a forerunner to the New York Public Library.^[81]

As he revised his older works for Putnam, Irving continued to write regularly, publishing biographies of the writer and poet Oliver Goldsmith in 1849 and the 1850 work about the Islamic prophet Muhammad. In 1855, he produced Wolfert's Roost, a collection of stories and essays he had originally written for Knickerbocker and other publications,^[82] and began publishing at intervals a biography of his namesake, George Washington, a work which he expected to be his masterpiece. Five volumes of the biography were published between 1855 and 1859.^[83] Irving traveled regularly to Mount Vernon and Washington, D.C. for his research, and struck up friendships with Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce.^[82]

He continued to socialize and keep up with his correspondence well into his seventies, and his fame and popularity continued to soar. "I don’t believe that any man, in any country, has ever had a more affectionate admiration for him than that given to you in America", wrote Senator William C. Preston in a letter to Irving. "I believe that we have had but one man who is so much in the popular heart".^[84] By 1859, author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. noted that Sunnyside had become "next to Mount Vernon, the best known and most cherished of all the dwellings in our land".^[85]

On the night of November 28, 1859, at 9:00 pm, only eight months after completing the final volume of his Washington biography, Washington Irving died of a heart attack in his bedroom at Sunnyside at the age of 76. Legend has it that his last words were: "Well, I must arrange my pillows for another night. When will this end?"^[86] He was buried under a simple headstone at Sleepy Hollow cemetery on December 1, 1859.^[87]

Irving and his grave were commemorated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his 1876 poem, "In The Churchyard at Tarrytown", which concludes with:

How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summers full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.^[88]

Legacy[link]

Literary reputation[link]

Bust of Washington Irving in Irvington, New York, not far from Sunnyside

Irving is largely credited as the first American Man of Letters, and the first to earn his living solely by his pen. Eulogizing Irving before the Massachusetts Historical Society in December 1859, his friend, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, acknowledged Irving's role in promoting American literature: "We feel a just pride in his renown as an author, not forgetting that, to his other claims upon our gratitude, he adds also that of having been the first to win for our country an honourable name and position in the History of Letters".^[89]

Irving perfected the American short story,^[90] and was the first American writer to place his stories firmly in the United States, even as he poached from German or Dutch folklore. He is also generally credited as one of the first to write both in the vernacular, and without an obligation to the moral or didactic in his short stories, writing stories simply to entertain rather than to enlighten.^[91] Irving also encouraged would-be writers. As George William Curtis noted, there "is not a young literary aspirant in the country, who, if he ever personally met Irving, did not hear from him the kindest words of sympathy, regard, and encouragement."^[92]

Some critics, however—including Edgar Allan Poe—felt that while Irving should be given credit for being an innovator, the writing itself was often unsophisticated. "Irving is much over-rated", Poe wrote in 1838, "and a nice distinction might be drawn between his just and his surreptitious and adventitious reputation—between what is due to the pioneer solely, and what to the writer".^[93] A critic for the New-York Mirror wrote: "No man in the Republic of Letters has been more overrated than Mr. Washington Irving."^[94] Some critics noted especially that Irving, despite being an American, catered to British sensibilities and, as one critic noted, wrote "of and for England, rather than his own country".^[95]

In Prospect Park (Brooklyn)

Other critics were inclined to be more forgiving of Irving's style. William Makepeace Thackeray was the first to refer to Irving as the "ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old",^[96] a banner picked up by writers and critics throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. "He is the first of the American humorists, as he is almost the first of the American writers", wrote critic H.R. Hawless in 1881, "yet belonging to the New World, there is a quaint Old World flavor about him".^[97]

Early critics often had difficulty separating Irving the man from Irving the writer—"The life of Washington Irving was one of the brightest ever led by an author", wrote Richard Henry Stoddard, an early Irving biographer^[98]—but as years passed and Irving's celebrity personality faded into the background, critics often began to review his writings as all style, no substance. "The man had no message", said critic Barrett Wendell.^[99] Yet, critics conceded that despite Irving's lack of sophisticated themes—Irving biographer Stanley T. Williams could be scathing in his assessment of Irving's work^[100]—most agreed he wrote elegantly.

Impact on American culture[link]

Irving popularized the nickname "Gotham" for New York City, later used in Batman comics and movies, and is credited with inventing the expression "the almighty dollar".

The surname of his Dutch historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker, is generally associated with New York and New Yorkers, and can still be seen across the jerseys of New York's professional basketball team, albeit in its more familiar, abbreviated form, reading simply Knicks. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, a neighborhood of New York City, there are two parallel streets named Irving Avenue and Knickerbocker Avenue; the latter forms the core of the neighborhood's shopping district.

One of Irving's most lasting contributions to American culture is in the way Americans perceive and celebrate Christmas. In his 1812 revisions to A History of New York, Irving inserted a dream sequence featuring St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon—a creation others would later dress up as Santa Claus. In his five Christmas stories in The Sketch Book, Irving portrayed an idealized celebration of old-fashioned Christmas customs at a quaint English manor, that depicted harmonious warm-hearted English Christmas festivities he experienced while staying in Aston Hall, Birmingham, England, that had largely been abandoned.^[101] He used text from The Vindication of Christmas (London 1652) of old English Christmas traditions, he had transcribed into his journal as a format for his stories.^[102] The book contributed to the revival and reinterpretation of the Christmas holiday in the United States.^[103] Charles Dickens later credited Irving as an influence on his own Christmas writings, including the classic A Christmas Carol.

The Community Area of Irving Park in Chicago was named in Irving's honor. The Irving Trust Corporation (now the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation) was named after him. Since there was not yet a federal currency in 1851, each bank issued its own paper and those institutions with the most appealing names found their certificates more widely accepted. His portrait appeared on the bank's notes and contributed to their wide appeal.

In his biography of Christopher Columbus,^[104] Irving introduced the erroneous idea that Europeans believed the world to be flat prior to the discovery of the New World.^[105] Borrowed from Irving, the flat-Earth myth has been taught in schools as fact to many generations of Americans.^[106][107]

Memorials[link]

Washington Irving, postage stamp,1940

Washington Irving's home, Sunnyside, is still standing, just south of the Tappan Zee Bridge in Tarrytown, New York. The original house and the surrounding property were once owned by 18th-century colonialist Wolfert Acker, about whom Irving wrote his sketch Wolfert's Roost (the name of the house). The house is now owned and operated as a historic site by Historic Hudson Valley and is open to the public for tours. The Washington Irving Memorial by Daniel Chester French stands near the entrance to Sunnyside in the village of Irvington, which renamed itself from Dearman in his memory, and visitors to Christ Episcopal Church in nearby Tarrytown, where he served as a vestryman in the last years of his life, can see his pew. West, over the Catskills and in the Finger Lakes, Cornell University's oldest continuous student-run organization, The Irving Literary Society, is named for Washington Irving. His name is also frequently mentioned in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 in a recurring theme where his name is signed by other people to documents which triggers several military investigations as to who Washington Irving is. Throughout the United States, there are many schools named after Irving or after places in his fictional works. A Washington Irving Memorial Park and Arboretum exists in Oklahoma.

The city of Irving, Texas gives credit to Washington Irving for the town's name. It is believed by local historians that Irving co-founders Otis Brown and J.O. Schulze decided in 1902 to name the city after the favorite author of Otis Brown's wife, Netta Barcus Brown. Schulze, a graduate engineer from the University of Iowa and member of the Washington Irving Literary Society, also was partial to the name Irving. The Irving City Council officially adopted author Washington Irving as the city's namesake in 1998. The Chicago, Illinois neighborhood of Irving Park is named after him. ^[108]

List of works[link]

References[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Burstein, Andrew. The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving. (Basic Books, 2007). ISBN 978-0-465-00853-7
• Bowers, Claude G. The Spanish Adventures of Washington Irving. (Riverside Press, 1940).
• Hellman, George S. Washington Irving, Esquire. (Alfred A. Knopf, 1925).
• Grant, Edward. (2001) God & Reason in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-80279-2 hardcover; ISBN 978-0-521-00337-7 softcover.
• Grant, John. (2006) Discarded Science: Ideas that seemed good at the time ... [sic], ff&f (Facts, Figures & Fun), publisher, ISBN 978-1-904332-49-7 hardcover.
• Irving, Pierre M. Life and Letters of Washington Irving. 4 vols. (G.P. Putnam, 1862). Cited herein as PMI.
• Irving, Washington. The Complete Works of Washington Irving. (Rust, et al., editors). 30 vols. (University of Wisconsin/Twayne, 1969–1986). Cited herein as Works.
• Irving, Washington. (1828) History of the Life of Christopher Columbus, 3 volumes, 1828, G. & C. Carvill, publishers, New York, New York; as 4 volumes, 1828, John Murray, publisher, London; and as 4 volumes, 1828, Paris A. and W. Galignani, publishers, France.
• Irving, Washington. (1829) The Life and Voyage of Christopher Columbus, 1 volume, 1829, G. & C. & H. Carvill, publishers, New York, New York; an abridged version prepared by Irving of his 1828 work.
• Jones, Brian Jay. Washington Irving: An American Original. (Arcade, 2008). ISBN 978-1-55970-836-4
• Warner, Charles Dudley. Washington Irving. (Riverside Press, 1881).
• Williams, Stanley T. The Life of Washington Irving. 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1935). ISBN 0-7812-5291-1

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Washington Irving

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Washington Irving

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Washington Irving

• Works by or about Washington Irving at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by Washington Irving at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Famous Quotes by Washington Irving
• Washington Irving's Sunnyside
• Timothy Hopkins' Washington Irving collection, 1683–1839(5 volumes) is housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries
• Index Entry for Washington Irving at Poets' Corner
• Washington Irving Cultural Route in Spain

Statue of Rip van Winkle in Irvington, New York, not far from "Sunnyside", the home of Washington Irving

"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."^[1]

Plot summary[link]

Dutch people playing nine pins (kegelen). Painted 1650-1660 by Jan Steen.

The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. In a pleasant village, at the foot of New York's "Kaatskill" Mountains, lives the kindly Rip Van Winkle, a colonial British-American villager of Dutch descent. Rip is an amiable though somewhat hermitic man who enjoys solitary activities in the wilderness, but is also loved by all in town—especially the children to whom he tells stories and gives toys. However, a tendency to avoid all gainful labor, for which his nagging wife (Dame Van Winkle) chastises him, allows his home and farm to fall into disarray due to his lazy neglect.

One autumn day, Rip is escaping his wife's nagging, wandering up the mountains with his dog, Wolf. Hearing his name being shouted, Rip discovers that the speaker is a man dressed in antiquated Dutch clothing, carrying a keg up the mountain, who requires Rip's help. Without exchanging words, the two hike up to an amphitheatre-like hollow in which Rip discovers the source of previously-heard thunderous noises: there is a group of other ornately-dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins. Although there is no conversation and Rip does not ask the men who they are or how they know his name, he discreetly begins to drink some of their liquor, and soon falls asleep.

He awakes in unusual circumstances: it seems to be morning, his gun is rotted and rusty, his beard has grown a foot long, and Wolf is nowhere to be found. Rip returns to his village where he finds that he recognizes no one. Asking around, he discovers that his wife has died and that his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he proclaims himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that the American Revolution has taken place; George III's portrait on the town inn has been replaced by that of George Washington. Rip is also disturbed to find another man is being called Rip Van Winkle (though this is in fact his son, who has now grown up).

The men he met in the mountains, Rip learns, are rumored to be the ghosts of Hendrick (Henry) Hudson's crew. Rip is told that he has apparently been away from the village for twenty years. An old local recognizes Rip and Rip's now-adult daughter takes him in. Rip resumes his habitual idleness, and his tale is solemnly taken to heart by the Dutch settlers, with other hen-pecked husbands, after hearing his story, wishing they could share in Rip's good luck, and have the luxury of sleeping through the hardships of war.

Characters in the story of Rip Van Winkle

• Rip Van Winkle – a henpecked husband who loathes 'profitable labor'.
• Dame Van Winkle – Rip Van Winkle's cantankerous wife.
• Rip – Rip Van Winkle's son.
• Judith Gardenier – Rip Van Winkle's daughter.
• Derrick Van Bummel – the local schoolmaster and later a member of Congress.
• Nicholas Vedder – landlord of the local inn.
• Mr. Doolittle – a hotel owner.
• Wolf – Rip's faithful dog
• The Ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew – Ghosts that share purple magic liquor with van Winkle.

Composition and publication history[link]

The first installment of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon included "Rip Van Winkle".

After a failed business venture with his brothers, Irving filed for bankruptcy in 1818.^[2] Despondent, he turned to writing for possible financial support, though he had difficulty thinking of stories to write. He stayed in Birmingham, England with his brother-in-law Henry Van Wart.^[3] The two were reminiscing in June 1818 when Irving was suddenly inspired by their nostalgic conversation.^[4] Irving locked himself in his room and wrote non-stop all night. As he said, he felt like a man waking from a long sleep. He presented the first draft of "Rip Van Winkle" to the Van Wert family over breakfast.^[5]

"Rip Van Winkle" was one of the first stories Irving proposed for his new book, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Irving asked his brother Ebeneezer to assist with publication in the United States. As Irving wrote, "I shall feel very anxious to hear of the success of this first re-appearance on the literary stage – Should it be successful, I trust I shall be able henceforth to keep up an occasional fire."^[6] 2000 copies of the first octavo-sized installment which included "Rip Van Winkle" were released on June 23, 1819, in New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, published by Cornelius S. Van Winkle and sold at a somewhat expensive 75 cents.^[7] A British edition was published shortly after by John Miller, who went out of business immediately after. With help from friend Walter Scott, Irving was able to convince John Murray to take over British publication of the Sketch Book.^[8]

Literary forerunners[link]

The story is similar to the German folktale "Peter Klaus"^[4] by Johann Karl Christoph Nachtigal, which is a shorter story set in a German village.

The story is also similar to the ancient Jewish story about Honi M'agel who falls asleep after asking a man why he is planting a carob tree which traditionally takes 70 years to mature, making it virtually impossible to ever benefit from the tree's fruit. After this exchange, he falls asleep on the ground and is miraculously covered by a rock and remains out of sight for 70 years. When he awakens, he finds a fully mature tree and that he has a grandson. When nobody believes that he is Honi, he prays to God and God takes him from this world.

In Christian tradition there is the well-known story of "The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus", recounting a group of early Christians who hid in a cave about 250 AD, to escape the persecution of Christians during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius, fell into a miraculous sleep and woke some 200 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, to discover that the city and the whole Empire had become Christian. This Christian story is recounted by Islam and appears in a famous Sura of the Koran, Sura Al-Kahf. The story recalls a group of young monotheists escaping from persecution within a cave and emerging hundreds of years later.^[9] Irving, who wrote a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, may have been familiar with the story.

The story is also similar to a 3rd century AD Chinese tale of Ranka, as retold by Lionel Giles in A Gallery of Chinese Immortals, and an 8th-century Japanese tale, "Urashima Tarō".

In Orkney there is a similar folktale linked to the burial mound of Salt Knowe adjacent to the Ring of Brodgar. A drunken fiddler on his way home hears music from the mound. He finds a way in and finds the trowes (Trolls) having a party. He stays and plays for two hours, then makes his way home to Stenness, where he discovers fifty years have passed. The Orkney Rangers believe this may be one source for Washington Irving's tale, because his father was an Orcadian from the island of Shapinsay and would almost certainly have known the tale.

In Ireland, the story of Niamh and Oisin has a similar theme. Oisin falls in love with the beautiful Niamh and leaves with her on her snow white horse to Tir Na nOg – the land of the ever-young. Missing his family and friends, he asks to pay them a visit. Niamh lends him her horse, warning him never to dismount, and he travels back to Ireland. But three hundred years have passed; his family and fellow warriors are all dead. Some men are trying to move a boulder. Oisin reaches down to help them. The girth of the horse's saddle snaps and he falls to the ground. Before the watching eyes of the men he becomes a very, very old man.

Diogenes Laertius, an Epicurean philosopher of the third century, includes the story of Epimenides in his book On the Lives, Opinions, and Sayings of Famous Philosophers, in chapter ten in his section on the Seven Sages of Greece, precursors to the first philosophers. The sage Epimenides is said to have slept in a cave for fifty-seven years. But unfortunately, "he became old in as many days as he had slept years". Although according to the different sources that Diogenes relates, Epimenides lived to be one hundred and fifty-seven years, two hundred and ninety-nine years, or one hundred and fifty-four years old.^[10]

Adaptations[link]

Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle, 1896

The story has been adapted for other media for the last two centuries, from stage plays to an operetta to cartoons to films.

Actor Joseph Jefferson was most associated with the character on the 19th century stage and made a series of short films in 1896 recreating scenes from his stage adaptation, and which are collectively in the U.S. National Film Registry. Jefferson's son, Thomas, followed in his father's footsteps and played the character in a number of early 20th century films.

Composer Ferde Grofe spent twenty years working on a symphonic tone poem based on Rip Van Winkle, eventually reworking the material into his Hudson River Suite. One of the movements is entitled "Rip Van Winkle" and is a musical depiction of the story.

The 1960s Tale Spinners For Children record series included a dramatization of the Rip van Winkle story in which the name of Rip's daughter was changed to "Katrina" and the characters of Nicholas Vedder and Derrick Van Bummel were given more importance.

In the 16th episode of The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which originally aired on January 16, 1965, Mr. Magoo (voiced by Jim Backus) plays Rip Van Winkle.^[11]

The story also inspired an episode of The Flintstones entitled "Rip Van Flintstone", which originally aired on November 5, 1965.^[12] In it, Fred falls asleep at the Slate Company Picnic and dreams he has awakened in Bedrock twenty years in the future, now a city with a population of 30,000. Besides a change in his personal appearance (Fred has grown a long beard, his hair has turned white and he needs a cane) he first finds out that Slate Company has gone out of business. Fred has been presumed dead and is now alone and forgotten; Barney has become a rich oil tycoon and Wilma has become a bitter old widow. The only one to remember him is his daughter Pebbles, now a full-grown woman who has married Bamm Bamm. Betty is mentioned in the dream sequence but not seen, implying that she has died. At one point during the episode, he even says, "Maybe I have fallen asleep for twenty years like in that Rip Van Winklestone story." However, Fred suddenly wakes up young again, realzing he was only momentarily dreaming.

A claymation version of the story was produced and directed by Will Vinton in 1978 and was nominated for an Academy Award Nomination for Short Subject Animation. The animated film was named Rip Van Winkle.^[13]

In the Faerie Tale Theatre children's television series hosted by Shelley Duvall in the 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola directed the episode "Rip Van Winkle" in which the Hollywood actor Harry Dean Stanton played the title role.^[14]

There is also an episode of the HBO show Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales For Every Child. They retold popular fairy tales by setting them in different cultures and settings and featuring voices provided by celebrities. For Rip Van Winkle they did a Feminist retelling of the story, given a 1960s twist, and told from the point of view of Rip's wife Vanna.

The TV show Wishbone showed the dog imagining himself as the title character, complete with the men playing ninepins and his mistaking the George Washington Inn for his old hangout of the King George Inn. It is set against the family meeting an elderly black woman who has not lived in her town since childhood, and her remarking at the change since her return makes her feel akin to Rip van Winkle.

The premise of the animated series Futurama where the main character Phllip J. Fry was cryogenically frozen from the year 1999 to 2999, was based on Rip Van Winkle.

Real life[link]

Similar events have happened in real life. The Russian Pioneer Psychologist Ivan Pavlov described a case of a man apparently sleeping 20 years, and there was another case in the Ukraine.^[15]

See also[link]

• Rip Van Wink from The Beano
• Rip van Winkle from Hellsing
• Rip Van Winkle Bridge
• Sleeping Beauty

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Rip Van Winkle

Sources[link]

• "Rip Van Winkle", illustrated by N. C. Wyeth (1921).
• "Rip Van Winkle", e-text from Bartleby.
• "Rip Van Winkle", audio version from 1946.
• "Rip Van Winkle", 1896 film.
• "Karl Katz", a comparison.

Other[link]

• Rip Van Winkle Study Guide
• Irving in Birmingham
• "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" – Irving's Fictions of Revolution
• A film clip of a 1896 Rip Van Winkle film starring Joseph Jefferson is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]