Washington Irving Biography

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 Ichabold 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.

Washington Irving was born in New York City as the youngest of 11 children. His father was a wealthy merchant, and his mother, and English woman, was the granddaughter of a clergyman. According to a story, George Washington met Irving, named after him, and gave his blessing. In the years to come Irving would write one of his greatest works, THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON (1855-59).

Early in his life Irving developed a passion for books. He read Robinson Crusoe, Sinbad the Sailor, and The World Displyed (stories about voyages and travels). 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. He visited Marseilles, Genoa, Sicily, where he saw the famous English naval officer, Nelson, and met Washintong Allston, the painter, in Rome. After return to the United States, 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.

Irving's success in social life and literature was shadowed by a personal tragedy. He was engaged to be married to Matilda Hoffmanm who died at the age of seventeen, in 1809. Later he wrote in a private letter, addressed to Mrs. Forster, as an answer to her inquiry why he had not been married: "For years I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image was continually before me, and I dreamt of her incessantly."

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 one's 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 mother, Irving decided to stay in 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. After working for three months on the History of the Conquest of Mexico, Irving found out that the famous historian William Prescott had decided to write a book on the same subject and abandoned his theme, "to be treated by one who will built up from it an enduring monument in the literature of our country." Between the years 1842-45 Irving was U.S. Ambassador in Spain. The appointment was sponsored by Daniel Webster, who was the Secretary of State. At the age of sixty-two Irving wrote to his friends in America: "My hear yearns for home; and I have now probably turned the last corner in life, and my remaining years are growing scanty in number, I begrude every one that I am obliged to pass separated from my cottage and my kindred...."

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 The Life of George Washington . Irving died in Tarrytown on November 28, 1859. Just before retiring for the night, the author had said: "Well, I must arrange my pillows for another weary night! If this could only end!" Irving's 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 pasts of old Europe, the riverside Creolo 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.