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Rip Van Winkle and
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
by Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Born in New York City, Washinton Irving was one of the first Americans
to be recognized abroad as a man of letters, and he was a literary idol
at home.
While he studied law, Irving amused himself by writing essays
on
New
York society and the theatre. From 1804 to 1806 his older brothers
financed his tour of France and Italy and on his return he published
a series of humorous
and satirical essays. Under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker,
he published A History of New York (1809), a satire that has been
called the
first great
book of comic literature written by an American.
Irving went to England in 1815 to run the Liverpool branch of the
family hardware business, but could not save it when the whole
firm failed. With
the encouragement of Walter Scott, Irving turned definitely to
literature. The stories (including “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow”), appeared serially in New York in 1819–20;
their enthusiastic reception made Irving the best-known figure
in American literature both at home and abroad. Bracebridge Hall (1822),
the
next volume
of essays, although inferior to the previous book, was well received.
However, his Tales of a Traveller (1824), written after visits
to Germany and France,
was a failure.
Irving became a diplomatic attaché at the American embassy in
Madrid in 1826. There he produced his biography of Columbus (1828), largely
based on the work of the Spanish historian Navarrete; The Conquest
of Granada
(1829),
a romantic narrative; and the Spanish sketches of The Alhambra
(1832). After a short period at the American legation in London, he returned
to
New York.
He made a journey to the frontier and wrote about the American
West in A Tour of the Prairies (1835). From records furnished by John Jacob
Astor,
he wrote Astoria (1836), and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville,
U.S.A. (1837).
Irving subsequently established himself at his estate, Sunnyside,
near Tarrytown, N.Y., until he was sent to Madrid as American minister
to Spain
(1842–46). Once more at Sunnyside, he wrote a biography of Goldsmith
(1849) and the miscellaneous sketches called Wolfert’s Roost (1855)
and completed his biography of George Washington (1855–59) just before
his death.
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The
100 Greatest Books of the 20th Century
65 Quotations
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