Washington Irving
Washington Irving | |
|---|---|
 Washington Irving | |
| Born | April 3, 1783 New York, New York, United States |
| Died | November 28, 1859 (aged 76) Sunnyside, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Short story writer, essayist, biographer, politician |
| Literary movement | Romanticism |
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. 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), he was also a prolific essayist, biographer and historian. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th century Spain dealing with subjects such as Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra.
Irving and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving is said to have encouraged authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also the U.S. minister to Spain from 1842 to 1845.
Biography
Early Years
Washington Irving's parents were William Irving, Sr., originally of Shapinsay, Orkney, and Sarah (née Sanders), Scottish-English immigrants. They were married in 1761, while William was serving as a petty officer in the British Navy. By the time Washington was born, William was settled in Manhattan, and part of that city's small vibrant merchant class. Several of Washington Irving's older brothers themselves became active New York merchants, and they encouraged their younger brother's literary aspirations.
In 1802, the nineteen-year-old Irving began writing letters to The Morning Chronicle, submitting commentaries on New York's social and theater scene under the name of Jonathan Oldstyle--the first of many pseudonyms Irving would employ throughout his career. The letters caught the public's fancy, giving Irving an early whiff of fame and moderate notoriety. Aaron Burr, a copublisher of the Chronicle, was impressed enough to send clippings of the Oldstyle pieces to his daughter, Theodesia, while writer Charles Brockden Brown made a trip to New York to recruit Oldstyle for a literary magazine he was editing in Philadelphia.[1]
Concerned for his health, Irving's brothers financed an extended tour of Europe from 1804 to 1806. While Irving bypassed most of the sites and locations considered essential for the development of an upwardly-mobile young man, he honed the social and conversational skills that would later make 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."[2]
First Major Writings
Irving returned from Europe to study law with his legal mentor, Judge Josiah Ogden Hoffman, and began dabbling at writing again, creating 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 much like today's Mad magazine.[3] Salmagundi was a moderate success, spreading Irving's name and reputation beyond New York.
In 1809, while mourning the death of his 17-year-fiance 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 brilliant satire on self-important local history and contemporary politics. In the months prior to its publication, Irving started a hoax -- akin to today's viral marketing campaigns -- in which he placed a series of missing persons ads 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. With residents and city officials buzzing in anticipation, Irving's A History of New York became an immediate bestseller.[4] Today, the surname of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the fictional narrator of this and other Irving works, has become a nickname for Manhattanites in general.[5]
Casting about for a job after the success of A History of New York, he eventually landed a post as editor of a new magazine, the Analectic. Like many merchants and many New Yorkers, Irving originally opposed the War of 1812, but the British attack on Washington, D.C. in 1814 convinced him to enlist. He served on the staff of Daniel Tompkins, governor of New York and commander of the New York State Militia. Apart from a reconnaisance mission in the Great Lakes region, he saw no real action.
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.
Life in Europe
His efforts to restore the family business were unsuccessful, but he wrote prolifically, creating a series of sketches, stories, and observations. In 1819-1820 he published The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, which includes his best known stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle". "Rip Van Winkle" was written overnight while Irving was staying with his sister Sarah and her husband, Henry van Wart in Birmingham, England, a place that also inspired some of his other works. Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists, A Medley is based on Aston Hall there. The Sketch Book was an enormous success, and Irving soon traveled to the continent in search of new material, reading widely in Dutch and German folk tales. He published his work from this period in 1824 as Tales of a Traveller, a volume that included the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker." Like many successful authors of this era, Irving struggled against literary bootleggers. While in England, his sketches were published in book form by British publishers without his permission and from then on he published in Europe and the U.S. concurrently to protect his copyright.
While in Paris in 1825, Irving met Alexander Hill Everett, who was on his way to Madrid as American Minister to Spain. Everett invited Irving to join him in Madrid, noting that a number of manuscripts dealing with the Spanish conquest of the Americas had recently been made public. Irving left for Madrid in early 1826 and enthusiastically began scouring the Spanish archives for colorful material. He published The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828, the Conquest of Granada a year later, and the Voyages of the Companions of Columbus in 1831. These works are a mixture of history and fiction, a genre now called romantic history. 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. Irving left Spain in 1829 to accept a position in the US Embassy in London. While serving there he wrote Tales of the Alhambra, which was published concurrently in England and the United States.
Return to America
Irving returned to the United States in 1832 and traveled on the Western frontier in the 1830s (with Charles La Trobe[6] for some time) and recorded his glimpses of Western tribes in A Tour on the Prairies (1835). He spoke against the mishandling of relations with the Native American tribes by Europeans and Americans:
It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of America, in the early periods of colonization, to be doubly wronged by the white men. They have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by mercenary and frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been traduced by bigoted and interested writers.
His second Western book was Astoria; he wrote it during a six-month stay with the then-retired John Jacob Astor. It was a worshipful account of Astor's attempt to establish a fur trading colony at present-day Astoria, Oregon. The three "Western" books were designed to put to rest the notion that Irving's time in England and Spain had made him more European than American. Legends of the Conquest of Spain was published in 1835.
During Irving's stay with Astor, Benjamin Bonneville paid a visit. His tales of his three years in Oregon Country were said to have enthralled Irving. A month or two later, when Irving encountered Bonneville in Washington, D.C., Bonneville, struggling to write about his journey, decided instead to sell his maps and notes to Irving for $1,000. Irving used that material as the basis for his 1837 book The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, which is often considered the best of his three Western books.
Minister to Spain
In 1842, President John Tyler appointed Irving as Minister to Spain. During Irving's tenure, Spain was in a state of perpetual political upheaval, with a number of warring factions vying for control of the twelve-year-old Queen Isabella II. When the political situation in Spain was at last 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.[7]
Final Years and Death
Returning from Spain in 1845, Irving took up permanent residence at Sunnyside, and began work on an Author's Revised Edition of his works for the publisher George Palmer Putnam, in a deal that guaranteed him 12 percent of the retail price of all copies sold—an agreement that would earn him nearly $88,000 over the next 12 years, the equivalent of $2 million today.[8] On the death of John Jacob Astor in 1848, Irving was hired as an executor of Astor's will, netting $10,600 for his efforts--about $250,000 today.[9]
Between 1855 and 1859, Irving continued to produce new books at a regular rate, including Wolfert's Roost, and a five-volume biography of George Washington.
On the evening of November 28, 1859, 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. He was buried at Sleepy Hollow cemetery on December 1, 1859.
Legacy
Washington'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 an historic site by Historic Hudson Valley and is open to the public for tours.
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".
Commemoration
Irving became the namesake for towns and streets across the United States. The village of Irvington, New York, and the town of Irvington, New Jersey, were named after the author, and also, it is believed, the city of Irving, Texas. Irvington, a community in eastern Indianapolis, is named after Washington Irving. Both Washington Street and Irving Street in Birmingham, Alabama, also bear the author's name. His book Bracebridge Hall was the inspiration for the naming of the town of Bracebridge, Ontario. In addition, a library in Los Angeles, California, is named in his honor. Irving Avenue in Port Chester, N.Y., is named after him, as is a condominium townhouse community along this road called Washington Mews, which was built during the 1980s. The Rip Van Winkle Bridge crosses the Huson River at Catskill, NY. Washington Irving Memorial Park and Arboretum in Bixby, Oklahoma also bears his name.
In Spain, the room at which he stayed in the Alhambra is labelled and referred to as his room. There is also a hotel named for him just outside the Alhambra.
The southernmost section of Lexington Avenue in New York City (between 14th and 20th Streets) is called Irving Place, named so after Washington Irving in 1833. A house that stands on the corner of 17th Street and Irving Place is said to have been the one time home of Washington Irving, however that claim seems to have been only a myth [10]. Across the street from this house is the Washington Irving High School (New York City). On the corner of 16th Street and 3rd Avenue (one block east of Irving Place), is the Washington Irving House apartment building. In Roslindale, Massachusetts a Middle School is named for him. In Fremont, California, the districts of Irvington and Washington and their respective high schools (Washington, Irvington) are also named in his honor.
There was also a Washington Irving High School in Clarksburg, West Virginia which was replaced by Robert C. Byrd High School in 1995. Washington Irving HS — or "WI" as it was called by locals — subsequently became the middle school.
The "literary district" in Kansas City, Missouri features buildings named after famous literary figures. The Washington Irving is among them, located on Roanoke Parkway.
Also, in Tarrytown, NY, there is a school named Washington Irving after him.
Works by Washington Irving
- Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle (1802)
- Salmagundi (1807)
- A History of New York (1809)
- The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819)
- Bracebridge Hall (1822)
- Tales of a Traveller (1824)
- The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828)
- The Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada (1829)
- Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus (1831)
- Tales of the Alhambra (1832)
- The Crayon Miscellany (comprised of "A Tour on the Prairies," "Abbotsford," and "Newstead Abbey")(1835)
- Astoria (1836)
- The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837)
- The Life of Oliver Goldsmith (1840, revised 1849)
- Biography and Poetical Remains of the Late Margaret Miller Davidson (1841)
- Mahomet and His Successors (1850)
- Wolfert's Roost (1855)
- Life of George Washington (five volumes, 1855-1859)
Pen names and associated writings
Geoffrey Crayon
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Jonathan Oldstyle
Bibliography
- The Complete Works of Washington Irving. (Richard Rust and others, eds.) (University of Wisconsin Press and Twayne Publishers, 1969–1982). This 30-volume series includes complete scholarly editions of all Irving's prose, as well as four volumes of letters and five volumes of journals and notebooks. Many of the volumes include extensive introductions and detailed biographical and contextual material.
- History, Tales & Sketches: Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent.; Salmagundi; A History of New York; The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (James W. Tuttleton, ed.) (Library of America, 1983) ISBN 978-0-94045014-1
- Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveller, The Alhambra (Andrew Myers, ed.) (Library of America, 1991) ISBN 978-0-94045059-2
- Three Western Narratives: A Tour on the Prairies, Astoria, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (James P. Ronda, ed.) (Library of America, 2004) ISBN 978-1-93108253-2
- The Life of Washington Irving, by Stanley T. Williams, 1935.
- The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving, by Andrew Burstein, 2007.
- Washington Irving: An American Original, by Brian Jay Jones (Arcade, 2008) ISBN 978-1-55970-836-4
- Tales of the Alhambra, by Washington Irving, ISBN 84-7169-018-7
References
- ^ Jones, 36
- ^ Jones, 44-70
- ^ Jones, 82
- ^ Jones, 118-127
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary
- ^ Jill Eastwood (1967). "La Trobe, Charles Joseph (1801 - 1875)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2. MUP. pp. 89–93. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
- ^ Jones, pp. 415-456
- ^ Jones, 464.
- ^ Jones, 461
- ^ Gray, Christopher, "The Washington Irving House; Why the Legend of Irving Place Is but a Myth", The New York Times, March 13, 1994
External Links
