Washington Irving

Washington Irving (b. 1783–d. 1859) had a long and diverse career as an author and public figure. Irving first published satirical essays (as “Jonathan Oldstyle”) for his brother Peter’s newspaper in 1802–1803. He collaborated with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding on the 1807–1808 satirical periodical Salmagundi, which was wildly popular in New York. A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), narrated by the fictitious xenophobic historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, was at once an accurate history of New Amsterdam, a satire on Thomas Jefferson’s administration, and a meditation on the writing of history. Irving moved to Europe in 1815 as an agent for his brothers’ business, but after the business went bankrupt in 1818, Irving set about making a living through his writing. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820) was published nearly simultaneously in installments in the United States and the United Kingdom to secure copyright in both; it was an immediate success and was lauded on both sides of the Atlantic. His attempts to follow up this initial success with similar collections of tales and sketches (Bracebridge Hall [1822] and Tales of a Traveller [1824]) met with considerably less commercial and critical success. Invited to Spain in 1824 to translate newly available documents from Columbus’ expeditions, Irving instead produced The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), which became the standard English-language account of Columbus and went through 175 editions in the United States and Europe. Irving’s subsequent travels in southern Spain produced A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and the immensely popular “Spanish Sketch-Book,” The Alhambra (1832). During this period Irving also produced a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, which was eventually published in 1849 as Mahomet and His Successors. Irving finally returned to the United States in 1832, almost immediately participating in an expedition preparing for Indian removal, which was recounted in A Tour on the Prairies (1835). John Jacob Astor then commissioned him to write Astoria (1836), a history of the fur-trading colony, while he also collected materials for another Western narrative, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837). Apart from a period as American Minister to Spain (1842–1846), during which he mediated on behalf of Isabella II during the Carlist Wars, Irving spent much of the rest of his life building his Hudson Valley home called Sunnyside. His final work was the monumental five-volume Life of George Washington (1855–1859). Not only was Irving the first American writer to achieve international celebrity, but he served as a US ambassador; revived tourist interest in Andalusia; shaped the profession of authorship in America and Europe; produced the first comprehensive histories of New Amsterdam/New York, Columbus, and the founder of Islam in English; and wrote the first and perhaps best-known American short stories.