Washington Irving

Short story writer

Date of Birth	:	08 Dec, 1783
Date of Death	:	28 Nov, 1859
Place of Birth	:	Manhattan, New York, United States
Profession	:	Short Story Writer, Historian, Diplomat
Nationality	:	American

Washington Irving was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He wrote the short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain that deal with subjects such as the Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors. Irving served as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s.

Irving was born and raised in Manhattan to a merchant family. He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. He temporarily moved to England for the family business in 1815, where he achieved fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. which was serialized from 1819 to 1820. He continued to publish regularly throughout his life, and he completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death at age 76 in Tarrytown, New York.

Irving was one of the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and he encouraged other American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe. He was also admired by some British writers, including Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Francis Jeffrey, and Walter Scott. He advocated for writing as a legitimate profession and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement.

Biography

Early years

Washington Irving's parents were William Irving Sr., originally of Quholm, Shapinsay, Orkney, Scotland, and Sarah (née Saunders), originally of Falmouth, Cornwall, England. 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 died in infancy, both named William, as did their fourth child John. Their surviving children were William Jr. (1766), Ann (1770), Peter (1771), Catherine (1774), Ebenezer (1776), John Treat (1778), Sarah (1780), and Washington.

Watercolor of Washington Irving's encounter with George Washington, painted in 1854 by George Bernard Butler Jr.

The Irving family settled in Manhattan, and were part of the city's merchant class. Washington was born on April 3, 1783,the same week that New York City residents learned of the British ceasefire which ended the American Revolution. Irving's mother named him after George Washington. Irving met his namesake at age 6 when George Washington came to New York just before his inauguration as President in 1789. The President blessed young Irving, an encounter that Irving had commemorated in a small watercolor painting which continues to hang in his home.

The Irvings lived at 131 William Street at the time of Washington's birth, but they later moved across the street to 128 William Street. Several of Irving's brothers became active New York merchants; they encouraged his literary aspirations, often supporting him financially as he pursued his writing career.

Irving was an uninterested student who preferred adventure stories and drama, and he regularly sneaked out of class in the evenings to attend the theater by the time he was 14. An outbreak of yellow fever in Manhattan in 1798 prompted his family to send him upriver, where he stayed with his friend James Kirke Paulding in Tarrytown, New York. It was in Tarrytown where he became familiar with the bucolic beauty of region with its Dutch customs and local ghost stories. Though the town of Sleepy Hollow did not exist in Irving's time (North Tarrytown changed its name to Sleepy Hollow in 1996), the area had been known as Slapershaven or "Sleeper's Haven" by the Dutch. 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 Mountains region, the setting for "Rip Van Winkle". "Of all the scenery of the Hudson", Irving wrote, "the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination".

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

Concerned for his health, Irving's brothers financed an extended tour of Europe from 1804 to 1806. He bypassed most of the sites and locations considered essential for the social development of a young man, to the dismay of his brother William who wrote that he was pleased that his brother's health was improving, but he did not like the choice to "gallop through Italy… leaving Florence on your left and Venice on your right". Instead, Irving honed the social and conversational skills that eventually made him one of the world's most in-demand guests. "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". While visiting Rome in 1805, Irving struck up a friendship with painter Washington Allston and was almost persuaded into a career as a painter. "My lot in life, however, was differently cast".

First major writings

Irving returned from Europe to study law in New York City with his legal mentor, Judge Josiah Ogden Hoffman. By his own admission, he was not a good student and barely passed the bar exam in 1806. He began socializing with a group of educated young men whom he called "Kilkenny", and with his brother William and his friend James Kirke Paulding he created the literary journal Salmagundy in January 1807, writing under various pseudonyms, such as William Wizard and As Launcelot Langstaff. Irving covered New York culture and politics in a 20th-century Mad Magazine style. Salmagundi was a moderate success, spreading Irving's name and fame beyond New York. He nicknamed New York City "Gotham", an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "city of goats", in issue 17, dated November 11, 1807.

A wash drawing by Felix Ossie Darley of the fictional "Diedrich Knickerbocker" from the frontispiece of A History of New York

Irving completed a history of New-York from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809) while mourning the death of his 17-year-old fiancée, Matilda Hoffmann. It was his first major book and a satire on self-important local history and contemporary politics. Before it was published, Irving began a hoax by placing a series of missing person's ads in New York newspapers, seeking information on Diedrich Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian who had allegedly disappeared from his hotel in New York City. As part of the plot, he sends a notice from the hotel proprietor informing readers that if Mr. Knickerbocker fails to return to the hotel to pay his bill, he will publish a manuscript that Knickerbocker left behind.

Unsuspecting readers eagerly followed Knickerbocker's story and his manuscript, and some New York City officials were concerned enough to offer the missing historian a reward for his safe return. Irving then published History of New York on December 6, 1809, under the pseudonym Knickerbocker, to immediate critical and popular success. "It took off with the public", Irving commented, "and gave me celebrity, because an original act was something extraordinary and unusual in America". by doing

After the success of A History of New York, Irving looked for a job and eventually became the editor of Analectic magazine, where he wrote biographies of naval heroes such as James Lawrence and Oliver Hazard Perry. He was also among the first magazine editors to reprint Francis Scott Key's poem "Defense of Fort McHenry", immortalized as "The Star-Spangled Banner". Irving, like many other merchants, initially opposed the War of 1812, but in 1814 The British invasion of Washington, DC in 1940 convinced him to enlist. He served on the staff of Daniel Tompkins, the governor of New York and commander of the New York State militia, but saw no real action except for a revival mission in the Great Lakes region. The war was disastrous for many American merchants, including Irving's family, and he moved to England in mid-1815 to save the family business. He spent the next 17 years in Europe.