A short life of the author
Washington Irving (3 April 1783 – 28 November 1859) was an American essayist, biographer, historian, and short story writer who was the first American to achieve international literary fame and who is often called “the father of American literature.” His two most famous tales — “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” — have become permanent fixtures of American mythology, retold, adapted, and parodied so often that they have achieved a cultural ubiquity that transcends their literary origins.
Early Life and A History of New York
Irving was born in New York City, the youngest of eleven children, and named after George Washington, whom his family admired. He trained desultorily as a lawyer but was drawn to literature and satire. His first major work, A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), published under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, is a mock-heroic history of Dutch New Amsterdam that is simultaneously a burlesque of scholarly pretension and a genuinely affectionate portrait of old New York. The book established Irving’s reputation and gave the word “Knickerbocker” to New York culture.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819–1820)
Irving’s masterwork is The Sketch Book, a collection of essays and stories published serially in 1819–1820 and issued as a book in 1820. Most of the pieces are graceful, Addisonian essays about English life and customs — Irving lived in England from 1815 to 1832 — but two stories elevated the collection from pleasant miscellany to permanent literature.
“Rip Van Winkle” tells the story of a hen-pecked Dutch-American farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains, meets a group of ghostly bowlers, drinks their liquor, falls asleep for twenty years, and wakes to find that the American Revolution has happened in his absence. The story is ostensibly drawn from a German legend, but Irving made it entirely American — a parable of change and continuity, of the anxiety of a new nation about its own identity.
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is a comic ghost story about Ichabod Crane, a superstitious schoolmaster who is terrorised by the Headless Horseman — who may or may not be the rival suitor Brom Bones in disguise. The story is set in the Hudson Valley and saturated with the atmosphere of autumnal New York — pumpkins, harvest moons, and the peculiar combination of cosiness and dread that has made it the definitive American Halloween story.
Later Works
Bracebridge Hall (1822) and Tales of a Traveller (1824) continued in the Sketch Book vein but with diminishing returns. The Alhambra (1832) — a collection of essays and tales inspired by Irving’s residence in the Moorish palace in Granada — is his finest later work, often called “the Spanish Sketch Book,” and it helped create the romantic image of Moorish Spain that persists to this day.
Irving also wrote substantial works of history and biography. Astoria (1836) is an account of John Jacob Astor’s fur-trading expedition to the Pacific Northwest. Life of George Washington (1855–1859), his last major work, is a five-volume biography of his namesake — scholarly, comprehensive, and still consulted.
Diplomat and Public Figure
Irving served as the American Minister to Spain (1842–1846) and was one of the most famous Americans of his era — admired in both America and Europe, personally acquainted with Scott, Byron, Dickens, and other literary giants.
Sunnyside and the Literary Life
Irving’s estate, Sunnyside — a Dutch-Colonial cottage on the banks of the Hudson River in Tarrytown, near the setting of “Sleepy Hollow” — became one of the first American literary pilgrim sites. Irving bought and renovated the house in the 1830s, and it was a tourist attraction during his lifetime. It is now a house museum operated by Historic Hudson Valley and remains a popular destination, particularly in October, when the region embraces the Headless Horseman legend with an enthusiasm Irving would have found amusing.
Irving was also the first American writer to earn a substantial living from his pen alone — a fact of cultural significance. By demonstrating that an American could support himself through authorship, he helped create the conditions for the professional literary culture that Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville would inherit (and struggle with).
Legacy
Irving’s literary significance is primarily as a pioneer. He demonstrated that American writers could compete with English writers on equal terms, and he created two stories that became part of the American unconscious. His prose style — elegant, humorous, gently ironic — influenced a generation of American writers, though his leisurely manner fell out of fashion as American literature became more direct and democratic. “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are immortal — they have been adapted into plays, operas, films (including Tim Burton’s 1999 Sleepy Hollow), and television productions countless times.
Collecting Irving
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819–1820) in the original serial parts or the first American book edition is one of the great American literary collectibles, valued at $5,000–$20,000. A History of New York (1809) in first edition is also valuable. Irving’s books were widely reprinted throughout the nineteenth century; first editions are distinguished by careful bibliographic examination.