Look up Portal, portal, or portals in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Portal may refer to:

• Portal (architecture), a gate, door, or the extremeties (ends) of a tunnel
• Portal (fiction), a magical or technological doorway that connects two different locations.

Computing[link]

• Enterprise portal, a framework to provide a single point of access to a variety of information and tools
• Intranet portal, a gateway that unifies access to all enterprise information and applications
• Portal rendering, an optimization technique in 3D computer graphics
• Web portal, a site that functions as a point of access to information on the Internet
• Portals network programming api, a high-performance networking programming interface for massively parallel supercomputers

Entertainment[link]

• Portal (interactive novel), a 1986 video game by Activision
• Portal (video game), a 2007 video game by Valve Corporation
• Portal 2, the sequel to Valve's 2007 video game Portal
• Portal (TV series), a series about MMORPGs

Geography[link]

• Portal, California
• Portal, Georgia
• Portal, North Dakota

Music[link]

• Portall, a Thrash-Death Metal band from the Netherlands
• Portal (Australian band), a metal band from Australia
• Portal (UK band), a band from the UK
• Portals (album), a 2009 album by Arsonists Get All The Girls

Other uses[link]

• Portal (comics), a Marvel comic character
• Portal (Magic: The Gathering), a set in the Magic: The Gathering card game
• Portal Bridge, over the Hackensack River in New Jersey
• Portal Software, a company based in Cupertino, California
• Clube Atlético Portal, a football club based in Uberlândia, Brazil
• Portals Athletic F.C., a defunct football club, based in Overton, England
• Portal (magic trick), an illusion performed by David Copperfield

People with the surname[link]

• Antoine Portal (1742–1832), French anatomist, doctor and medical historian
• Charles Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford (1893–1971), British Marshal of the RAF and Chief of the Air Staff in World War II
• Wyndham Portal, 1st Viscount Portal (1885–1949), British businessman and public servant
• Michel Portal (born 1935), French composer, saxist, and clarinetist
• Nicolas Portal (born 1979), French professional road bicycle racer
• Gerald Portal (1858–1894), British colonial diplomat

See also[link]

Portal portal

Portal Directory

• El Portal, Florida
• Hepatic portal vein, a vein that drains blood from the digestive system
• Portal venous system, an occurrence where one capillary bed drains into another through veins
• Portal frame, a construction method
• Portal stones, a type of stone monument
• Porthole

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. It entails more than basic facts (education, work, relationships, and death), a biography also portrays a subject's experience of these events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of a subject's personality.

Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Biographical works in diverse media—from literature to film—form the genre known as a biography.

An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and, at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An autobiography is about a life of a subject, written by that subject or sometimes with a collaborator. ^[1]

Early biography[link]

The Early Middle Ages (AD 400 to 1450) saw a decline in awareness of the classical culture in Europe. During this time, the only repositories of knowledge and records of the early history in Europe were those of the Roman Catholic Church. Hermits, monks, and priests used this historic period to write the first modern biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to the church fathers, martyrs, popes, and saints. Their works were meant to be inspirational to the people, vehicles for conversion to Christianity (see Hagiography). One significant secular example of a biography from this period is the life of Charlemagne by his courtier Einhard.

Meanwhile in the medieval Islamic civilization (c. AD 750 to 1258), biographies began to be produced on a large scale, noteably with the advent of paper and the beginning of the Prophetic biography tradition. This led to the introduction of a new literary genre: the biographical dictionary. The first biographical dictionaries were written in the Muslim world from the 9th century onwards. They contained more social data for a large segment of the population than that found in any other pre-industrial society. The earliest biographical dictionaries initially focused on the lives of the prophets of Islam and their companions, with one of these early examples being The Book of The Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi. And then began the documentation of the lives of many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who lived in the medieval Islamic world.^[2]

By the late Middle Ages, biographies became less church-oriented in Europe as biographies of kings, knights, and tyrants began to appear. The most famous of such biographies was Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. The book was an account of the life of the fabled King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Following Malory, the new emphasis on humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects, such as artists and poets and encouraged writing in the vernacular. Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550) was the landmark biography focusing on secular lives. Vasari made celebrities of his subjects, as the Lives became an early "bestseller". Two other developments are noteworthy: the development of the printing press in the 15th century and the gradual increase in literacy. Biographies in the English language began appearing during the reign of Henry VIII. John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1563), better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, was essentially the first dictionary of the biography in Europe, followed by Thomas Fuller's The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with a distinct focus on public life. Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, A General History of the Pyrates (1724) is the prime source for the biographies of many well-known pirates.^[3]

The romantic biographers disputed many of Johnson's judgments. Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1781–88) exploited the romantic point of view and the confessional mode. The tradition of testimony and confession was brought to the New World by the Puritan and Quaker memoirists and journal-keepers, where the form continued to be influential. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (1791) would provide the archetype for the American success story. (Stone, 1982) Autobiography would remain an influential form of biographical writing.

Generally the American biography followed the English model, while incorporating Thomas Carlyle's view that a biography was a part of history. Carlyle asserted that the lives of great human beings were essential to understanding society and its institutions. While the historical impulse would remain a strong element in the early American biography, the American writers carved out their own distinct approach. What emerged was a rather didactic form of biography, which sought to shape the individual character of a reader in the process of defining national character. (Casper, 1999)

The distinction between the mass biography and the literary biography had formed by the middle of the nineteenth century, and reflected a breach between high culture and middle-class culture. This division would endure for the remainder of the century. Biography began to flower, thanks to new publishing technologies and an expanding reading public. This revolution in publishing made books available to a larger audience of readers. Almost ten times as many American biographies appeared from 1840 to 1860 than had appeared in the first two decades of the century. In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were published for the first time. Also, American periodicals began publishing a sequence of biographical sketches. (Casper, 1999) The topical emphasis shifted from republican heroes to self-made men and women.

Much of the late nineteenth-century biography remained formulaic. Notably, few autobiographies had been written in the nineteenth-century. The following century witnessed a renaissance of autobiography. Beginning with Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery (1901) and followed by Henry Adams' Education (1907), the chronicle of self-defined failure that ran counter to the predominant American success story. The publication of socially significant autobiographies by both men and women began to flourish. (Stone, 1982)

The authority of psychology and sociology was ascendant, and would make its mark on the new century’s biographies. (Stone, 1982) The demise of the "great man" theory of history was indicative of the emerging mindset. Human behavior would be explained through Darwinian theories. "Sociological" biographies conceived of their subjects' actions as the result of the environment, and tended to downplay individuality. The development of psychoanalysis led to a more penetrating and comprehensive understanding of the biographical subject, and induced biographers to give more emphasis to childhood and adolescence. Clearly these psychological ideas were changing the way Americans read and wrote biographies, as a culture of autobiography developed in which the telling of one's own story became a form of therapy. (Casper, 1999)

The conventional concept of national heroes and narratives of success disappeared in the obsession with psychological explorations of personality. The new school of biography featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers. This wave included Lytton Strachey, Gamaliel Bradford, André Maurois, and Emil Ludwig, among others. Strachey's biographies had an influence similar to that which Samuel Johnson had enjoyed earlier. In the 1920s and '30s, biographical writers sought to capitalize on Strachey's popularity and imitate his style. Robert Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) stood out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." The trend in literary biography was accompanied in popular biography by a sort of "celebrity voyeurism", in the early decades of the century. This latter form's appeal to readers was based on curiosity more than morality or patriotism.

By World War I, cheap hard-cover reprints had become popular. The decades of the 1920s witnessed a biographical "boom." In 1929, nearly 700 biographies were published in the United States, and the first dictionary of American biography appeared. In the decade that followed, numerous biographies continued to be published, despite the economic depression. They reached a growing audience through inexpensive formats via public libraries.

The late feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun observed that women's biographies and autobiographies began to change character during the second wave of feminist activism. She cited Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, as the "beginning of a new period of women's biography, because "[only] in 1970 were we ready to read not that Zelda had destroyed Fitzgerald, but Fitzgerald her: he had usurped her narrative." Heilbrun named 1973 as the turning point in women's autobiography, with the publication of May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude, for that was the first instance where a woman told her life story, not as finding "beauty even in pain" and transforming "rage into spiritual acceptance," but acknowledging what had previously been forbidden to women: their pain, their rage, and their "open admission of the desire for power and control over one's life."^[4]

Multimedia forms[link]

With technological advances in the twentieth century, multimedia biography became more popular than literary forms of personality. Along with documentary Biographical films, Hollywood produced numerous commercial films based on the lives of famous people. The popularity of these forms of biography culminated in such cable and satellite television networks as A&E, The Biography Channel, The History Channel, and History International.

More recently, CD-ROM and online biographies have appeared. Unlike books and films, they often do not tell a chronological narrative: instead, they are archives of many discrete media elements related to an individual person, including video clips, photographs, and text articles. Media scholar Lev Manovich says that such archives exemplify the database form, allowing users to navigate the materials in many ways. (Manovich 220) Twenty-first century web 2.0 applications, such as Annoknips.com enable users all over the world to compile their own biography and illustrate it with other people's photos.

Book awards[link]

Several countries offer an annual prize for writing a biography such as the:

• Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize – Canada
• National Biography Award – Australia
• Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography – United States
• Whitbread Prize for Best Biography – United Kingdom
• J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography – United Kingdom
• Prix Goncourt de la Biographie – France

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	History portal

• Autobiography
• Biography: A Brief History (book)
• Biography in literature
• Dictionary of National Biography (DNB, notable figures from British history)
• Family history
• Historical document
• List of biographers
• List of political career biographies
• Lists of people
• Who's Who

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Casper, Scott E. Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
• Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman's Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
• Lee, Hermione. Biography: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-953354-1
• Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
• Stone, Albert E. Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

External links[link]

Find more about Biography on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

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

Not to be confused with pornographic actress Sunny Lane.

Sunny Leone
Sunny Leone at the AVN Expo, Las Vegas, NV on January 20, 2012
Born	(1981-05-13) May 13, 1981 (age 31)[1] Sarnia, Ontario, Canada[2]
Nationality	Canadian/American
Ethnicity	Punjabi[3]
Height	5 ft 4 in (1.63 m)[1][2]
Weight	110 lb (50 kg; 7.9 st)[1][2]
Spouse	Daniel Weber (2011-present)[4]
No. of adult films	33 as actress, 25 as director (per IAFD)[5]
Website
http://www.sunnyleone.com/

Sunny Leone (born May 13, 1981)^[1] is an Indo-Canadian pornographic actress, actress, businesswoman and model of dual Canadian/American nationality. She was named Penthouse Pet of the Year in 2003 and was a contract star for Vivid Entertainment. Named by Maxim as one of the 12 top porn stars in 2010, she has also played roles in independent mainstream films and television shows.

Early life[link]

Leone was born in Sarnia, Ontario to Sikh Punjabi parents from India.^[3] Her father was born in Tibet and raised in Delhi, while her mother (who died in 2008^[6]) was from a small town named Nahan in Sirmaur, Himachal Pradesh.^[3][7] As a young girl, she was very athletic and played street hockey with the boys,^[2] enjoyed ice skating on a nearby frozen lake and drinking hot chocolate in front of a fire after playing in the snow all day.^[8]

Though she was raised as a Sikh,^[3] her parents enrolled her in a Catholic school,^[3][9] as it was felt to be unsafe for her to go to public school.^[10] There she had her first kiss at 11, lost her virginity to a basketball player at another school at 16,^[9] and discovered that she was bisexual at 18.^[11] When she was 13, her family moved to Fort Gratiot, Michigan, then to Lake Forest, California a year later,^[9][12] fulfilling her grandparents' dream that the family be together in one place.^[3] She graduated from high school in 1999 and enrolled in college.

Career[link]

Before working in the porn industry, she first worked at a German bakery,^[13] a Jiffy Lube,^[9] and later a tax and retirement firm.^[14]

Leone at the 2002 Adult Entertainment Expo, one of her earliest promotional appearances

While studying to be a pediatric nurse in Orange County, a classmate who was an exotic dancer introduced Leone to John Stevens, an agent who in turn introduced her to Jay Allen, a photographer for Penthouse magazine.^[7] When picking a name for her adult career, she has said that Sunny is her real name and Leone was picked by Bob Guccione, former owner of Penthouse magazine.^[15] She posed for Penthouse magazine, and was named Penthouse Pet of the Month for the March 2001 issue, followed by a feature in the Holiday 2001 edition of Hustler magazine as a Hustler Honey. She has appeared in other magazines including Cheri,^[16] Mystique Magazine,^[17] High Society, Swank, AVN Online, Leg World, Club International and Lowrider,^[18][19] while her online credits include ModFX Models,^[20] Suze Randall,^[21] Ken Marcus^[22] and Mac & Bumble.^[23] Her pictorial credits also include working with stars like Adriana Sage, Jenna Jameson, Jelena Jensen and Aria Giovanni.

In 2003, she was declared the Penthouse Pet of the Year and also starred in the video Penthouse Pets in Paradise alongside Tera Patrick and Kyla Cole. In 2005 Adam & Eve appointed her as their West Coast Internet Sales Representative.^[24]

That same year, Leone signed a three-year contract with Vivid Entertainment with which she transitioned into the world of hardcore pornography, stating that she would only do lesbian scenes.^[2] Her first movie released was titled Sunny^[25] and was released in December 2005. Her next movie, Virtual Vivid Girl Sunny Leone, was the first interactive title for Leone, who was the first Vivid Girl to make such a movie.^[26] Taking only four days to film,^[13] the movie won her her first AVN Award (Best Interactive DVD). She followed this with Sunny Loves Cher, which featured her first on-screen squirting,and The Female Gardner co-starring Mikayla Mendez and Daisy Marie.

Leone's last two movies under her contract with Vivid were It's Sunny in Brazil, which was filmed in Brazil.^[27] and The Sunny Experiment also starring Monique Alexander and Brea Lynn.^[28] The movies were released in October and December 2007 respectively.

In May 2007, upon re-signing her contract with Vivid for another six films, Leone agreed to perform for the first time with men on camera, but exclusively with her fiancé, Matt Erikson.^[29] That summer she also received breast augmentation,^[30] and shot her first movie under the new contract titled Sunny Loves Matt. The movie led to her to be nominated for three (out of six) AVN awards in 2009 in addition to being a choice for Female Performer of the Year.^[31] She followed up her first boy-girl title with The Other Side of Sunny in October 2008, which would be the last time she would perform with Erikson.

Leone at Vivid booth during the 2008 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas

In January 2008, Leone revealed that she was no longer exclusive to Erikson, and had done scenes with other actors, most notably Tommy Gunn, Charles Dera, James Deen^[32] and Voodoo.^[33] In August of that same year, she announced the launch of her own studio, Sunlust Pictures, with Daniel Weber as her partner.^[34] With her new venture Leone plans to write, direct and create her own brand of adult movies with Vivid Entertainment as her distributor.^[32] Her first independent production, The Dark Side of the Sun, was released in March 2009, and was debuted at the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas.^[35] In June 2009, she held a casting call in Las Vegas for her second independent production titled Sunny Slumber Party^[36] (released September 2009).

No longer exclusive to Vivid, Leone has started working with other studios and performers since 2009. She has managed to leverage her online popularity by striking deals with firms like PPPcard,^[37] AdultPokerParty.com,^[38] Brickhouse,^[39] Flirt4Free,^[40] Totemcash^[41] and Imlive^[42] to sell and distribute her content over the internet and other media.She won the "Web Babe of the Year" at the 2008 Xbiz Awards.^[43] Her websites and business interests are run under her banner company Leone L.L.C.

In addition to her film career, Leone has been part of the Vivid Comedy Tour,^[44] and has modelled for the Vivid Footwear collection.^[45] Leone has also participated in events like the Vivid/ClubJenna Lingerie Bowl^[46] and Vivid's Hot Rod Night.^[47] Doc Johnson launched a pocket pal^{[clarification needed]} in 2006 moulded to her vagina,^[48] and in 2008 released the Sunny Leone Exciter vibrator.^[49] Control MFG currently uses Leone's image along with other Vivid girls to market their line of skateboards. She is paired with Gab Ekoe, one of the Team Control riders.^[50] She also indicated that she plans to launch her own line of lingerie and other Sunny-branded products including a diamond jewellery line.^[32]

In September 2009, an iPhone application consisting of a collection of non-nude photos, some videos and a porn star-penned blog^[51] was approved by Apple for sale in the iTunes store, making it the first officially sanctioned application featuring a porn star.^[52] By February 2010, the app had been removed by Apple from the store.^[53]

Leone was voted number 13 (up from number 41 in 2007^[54]) on Genesis magazine's "Top 100 Porn stars" list,^[55] number 34 on Desiclubs.com's Top 50 Coolest Desis of 2004,^[56] and one of the "40 under 40" ranking on AVN Online magazine.^[57] In 2010, she was named by Maxim as one of the 12 top female stars in porn.^[58]

Mainstream appearances[link]

Leone's first mainstream appearance was in 2005, when she was a red carpet reporter for the MTV Awards on MTV India. She has also had a cameo in the film The Girl Next Door, performed in Ja Rule's video "Livin It Up" and a video for Kidd Skilly.^[59] Other credits include E!'s "Wild On!" and the Sundance Film Festival's 'After Dark.'^[60] Leone was a contestant in the second season of the Fox reality show My Bare Lady 2: Open For Business, in which a group of adult actresses were given classes and training on how to pitch investment ideas and competed for success in the business world.^[61] In addition to filming her scene for Debbie Does Dallas in 2007, Leone was also part of a Showtime documentary of the same name detailing the production of the movie and the personal lives of its stars.

She has indicated that for the right price she would seriously consider a career in Bollywood.^[62] She has been courted by Indian directors in the past but has felt uncomfortable with the roles that she would have played.^[15][63] Director Mohit Suri is rumored to have asked Leone to play the lead role in his movie Kalyug, but instead cast Deepal Shaw as he could not afford her $1 million acting fee.^[64] She has mentioned that Aamir Khan is her favorite Bollywood Actor,^[65] and that over 60% of her fans are from South Asia.^[66]

In 2008, Leone announced that she would be starring in a mainstream action adventure movie titled Pirates Blood, which was shot in Oman. The shooting was completed in two weeks and was to be released in winter 2008.^[67][68] Leone also landed a role in Middle Men, producer Chris Mallick's indie feature about the birth of the online porn industry set for wide theatrical release in 2009.^[69] She has mentioned that she will be appearing in an upcoming Will Ferrell movie scheduled to be released in 2010.^[70]

She appeared in the film The Virginity Hit playing a version of herself, where she is hired to take the virginity of the lead character.^[71]

Leone has made appearances at events such as the 2002 SEMA International Auto Salon, the 2002 Extreme Autofest Pomona and the 2006 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.^[72] Sunny has also been the hostess at events in clubs like the Mansion in Miami^[73] and the Highlands in Hollywood.^[74]

In 2005, she was mentioned in Forbes magazine for a story on Vivid Entertainment.^[75] Leone has also been featured in mainstream publications like FHM, Front and Jane magazine.^[76] In 2007, along with the other Vivid Girls, she was seen in a 48' high holiday Billboard in Times Square at W. 48th Street and Seventh Avenue.^[77] Leone is also one of the Penthouse Pets who appears in the PlayStation Portable game Pocket Pool. She was also featured in a coffee table book titled Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry by Micheal Grecco.^[78]

In 2004, she was part of "No More Bush Girls", in which she and several other popular adult actresses shaved off their pubic hair in protest of the Bush presidency.^[79] In May 2008, she shot a promotional video for Declare Yourself, a nonprofit, nonpartisan voter registration campaign targeting 18-to-29-year-olds.^[80] She indicated that Barack Obama would be her choice in the 2008 U.S. election, primarily because she felt he was more business friendly to the adult industry than his opponent John McCain.^[81] She also released a public service announcement on behalf of the ASACP, reminding adult webmasters to protect their sites from children by having an RTA label on it.^[82]

Leone has a strong interest in health and fitness, and has been featured in several mainstream fitness publications. Leone has modelled fitness clothing for the sports brand Fantasy Fitness^[83] and shared that she keeps her body in shape by working out as much as she can despite her busy schedule and as quoted in Men's Fitness magazine, "I try to eat very healthy – lots of vegetables, drinking my milk every day."^[84]

Bigg Boss[link]

In 2011, she participated in the Indian reality series Bigg Boss, entering the house on day 49.^[85][86] However she refused to divulge her porn star status, and replied to fellow house-mate Pooja Bedi that she was a model and a TV star in America for the last ten years or so.^[87] It was reported that she has caused a stir in the larger populace^[88] with her Twitter feed gaining 8,000 new followers in just 2 days^[89] and Google saying searches for her experienced a "breakout".^[90] There have also been complaints lodged with the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting alleging that the Colors TV channel is promoting pornography by having Leone appear on the show; among those who have filed are the Indian Artistes and Actors Forum^[91] and Anurag Thakur, member of Lok Sabha and head of the Bharatiya Janata Party's youth wing.^[92]

Bollywood[link]

During her stay in the Bigg Boss house, Sunny was approached by a famous Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt who entered the house briefly to offer her the lead role in Jism 2 (the sequel to the 2003 film Jism starring Bipasha Basu). She accepted it, which will result in Pooja Bhatt’s production house, Fish Eye Network and Leone’s agent discussing the movie further.^[93] The first look of the film Jism 2 poster was released anticipating the actress entry in Bollywood.^[94]