Washington Irving Biography and List of Works

American author, short story writer, essayist, poet, travel book writer, biographer, and columnist, best known for the short stories 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow', in which the schoolmaster Ichabod Crane meets with a headless horseman, and 'Rip Van Winkle', about a man who falls asleep for 20 years. Irving helped establish the short story in American literature. The charm, delicacy, and pictorial quality of Irving's writing has given it lasting value.

"I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories."
(from Tales of a Traveler, 1824)

Washington Irving was born in New York City as the youngest of 11 children. His father was a wealthy merchant. He studied law privately in the offices of Henry Masterton (1798), Brockholst Livingston (1801), and John Ogde Hoffman (1802), but practiced only briefly. From 1804 to 1806 he travelled widely Europe. After return to the United Sates, Irving was admitted to New York bar in 1806. He was a partner with his brothers in the family hardware business, New York and Liverpool, England, and representative of the business in England until it collapsed in 1818. During the war of 1812 Irving was a military aide to New York Governor Tompkins in the U.S. Army.

Irving's career as a writer started in journals and newspapers. He contributed to Morning Chronicle (1802-03), which was edited by his brother Peter, and published Salmagundi (1807-08), writing in collaboration with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding. From 1812 to 1814 he was an editor of Analetic magazine in Philadelphia and New York.

In 1809 appeared Irving's comic history of the Dutch regime in New York, A HISTORY OF NEW YORK, by the imaginary 'Dietrich Knickerbocker', who was supposed to be an eccentric Dutch-American scholar. The name Knickerbocker was later used to identify the first American school of writers, the Knickerbocker Group, of which Irving was a leading figure. The book became part of New York folklore, and eventually the word Knickerbocker was also used to describe any New Yorker who could trace their family to the original Dutch settlers. Irving's success continued with THE SKETCH BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT. (1819-20), a collection of stories, which allowed him to become a full-time writer. In 1822 appeared a sequel of The Sketch Book, BRACEBRIDGE HALL.

After the death of his fiancée, Irving sailed for Europe, where he remained for seventeen years from 1815 to 1832. He lived in Dresden (1822-23), London (1824) and Paris (1925), and worked for financial reasons for the U.S. Embassy in Madrid (1826-29). In 1829-32 he was a secretary to the American Legation under Martin Van Buren. During his stay in Spain, he wrote COLUMBUS (1828), CONQUEST OF GRANADA (1829), and THE COMPANIONS OF COLUMBUS (1831), all based on careful historical research. In 1829 he moved to London and published ALHAMBRA (1832), concerning the history and the legends of Moorish Spain. Among his literary friends were Mary Shelley and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

In 1832 Irving returned to New York to an enthusiastic welcome as the first American author to have achieved international fame. He toured the southern and western United States and wrote THE CAYON MISCELLANY (1835) and A TOUR OF THE PRAIRIES (1835). From 1836 to 1842 he lived at Sunnyside manor house, Tarrytown-on-Hudson. Between the years 1842-45 Irving was U.S. Ambassador in Spain.

Irving spent the last years of his life in Tarrytown. From 1848 to 1859 he was President of Astor Library, later New York Public Library. Irving's later publications include MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS (1850), WOLFERT'S ROOST (1855), and his five-volume LIFE OF WASHINGTON (1855-59). Irving died in Tarrytown on November 28, 1859. His major works were published in 1860-61 in 21 volumes.

As an essayist Irving was not interested in the meaning of nature like Emerson, self-inspection like Montaigne, or philosophical or moral questions like Bacon. His most durable and prolific fictional mask was 'Geoffrey Crayon', an observer, who is fascinated by the vanishing past of old Europe, the riverside Creole villages of Louisiana, and the old Pawnee hunting grounds of Oklahoma. He is the earliest literary figure of the American abroad, who appeared in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., in which also Irving's best-known story 'Rip Van Winkle' was included.

"There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature."
(from The Mutabilities of Literature)

Rip Van Winkle - based on a German folktale, set in the Dutch community of Pre-Revolutionary New York State. Published in The Sketch Book (1819-20). Rip Van Winkle is a farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains. He meets there a group of dwarfs playing nine pipes. Rip helps a dwarf and is rewarded with a draught of liquor. He falls into enchanted sleep. When he awakens, 20 years later, the world has changed. He is an old man with a long, white beard. Rip goes into town and finds everything changed. His wife is dead, his children are grown. The old man entertains the people with tales of the old days and his encounter with the dwarfs. - The theme of Irving's story derives from Diogenes Laertius, Epimenides (c. 200), in which Epimenides is sent by his father into the field to look for a sheep; he lays down in a cave and sleeps fifty-seven years. When awake, he goes on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short snap.

Irving also used other German folktales in his short stories, among them The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, probably based on a story by Karl Musäus (1735-1787), a German academic writer, who was among the first to collect local folktales. This story popularised the image of the headless horseman, and formed the basis for an operetta by Douglas Moore, The Headless Horseman, with libretto by Stephen Vincent Benét. The tale was filmed as the second half of Disney's animated movie The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949). Tim Burton's film version from 1999 has darkened and partly changed the story. The protagonist, Ichabod Crane, is a constable from New York, not a schoolteacher. He believes in rational methods of detection, and is sent to the farming community of Sleepy Hollow in Upstate New York, to investigate three recent murders. The townspeople know who the culprit is: a long-dead Hessian mercenary nicknamed the Headless Horseman who was killed during the Revolutionary War and buried in the Western Woods. "The headless horseman was often seen here. An old man who did not believe in ghosts told of meeting the headless horseman coming from his trip into the Hollow. The horseman made him climb up behind. They rode over bushes, hills, and swamps. When they reached the bridge, the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton. He threw the old man into the brook and sprang away over the treetops with a clap of thunder."

For further reading: Washington Irving: The Critical Reaction, ed. by James W. Tuttleton (1993); Critical Essays on Washington Irving by Ralph M. Aderman (1990); Adrift in the Old World: The Psychological Pilgrimage of Washington Irving by Jeffrey Rubin-Dosky (1988); Washington Irving by William L. Hedges (1965); The Life and Letters of Washington Irving by B.M. Irving (1967, 4 vols. original edition 1862-64), The Life of Washington Irving by Stanley T. Williams (1935, 2 vols.) - Note 1: Among Irving's s friends in England was Sir Walter Scott. - Note 2: In Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 the central character, Captain Yossarian, signs the censored letters of the soldiers with the name Washington Irving (or Irving Washington) - See also: Mark Twain whose early short stories arouse from the various folk and humorous traditions.

LETTERS OF JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, (1802)
ABU HASSAN, (1924)
THE WILD HUNTSMAN, (1924)
COMPLETE WORKS, (1969)