# The New International Encyclopædia/Irving, Washington

Edition of 1905. See also Washington Irving on Wikipedia; and the disclaimer.
​IRVING, Washington (1783—1850). An American author. He was born in New York City, April 3, 1783. His mother was English and his father had come from Scotland to New York City, where he engaged in trade. Irving studied in the schools of New York, and at the age of sixteen took up law. Before he was twenty he contributed, under the pseudonym of 'Jonathan Old-style.' to the New York Morning Chronicle, of which his brother was editor. Never in good health, he was obliged in 1804 to go to Europe, where he remained two years. Shortly after his return, he published in 1807 with his brother William and {{NIE lkpl|Paulding, James Kirke|James K. Paulding (q.v.), Salmagundi, or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff. Esq., an undertaking in the style of Addison's Spectator. In 1809 appeared A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker — a humorous, whimsical, and genially satirical sketch, which brought him reputation and money. This book had been begun with the intention of burlesquing a pretentious guide-book by Dr. Samuel Mitchell. The Knickerbocker History, to give it its most common name, grew as Irving's humor found more and more curiosities in the quaint and phlegmatic Dutch type, which is so strongly contrasted with the quick and more volatile descendants of British stock. He then gave up any idea of law, and became a sleeping partner of his brothers, whose business house was in Liverpool, occupying himself meanwhile with literary work. Irving's reputation had preceded him to England, where his gracious manners made him a favorite in society. He met Campbell and Thomas Moore and was heartily liked by Walter Scott, who persuaded Murray to publish Geoffrey Crayon's Sketch-Book. Among other things, he edited The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell. During the War of 1812 he was on the staff of Governor Tompkins, of New York, and was connected with the Analectic Magazine of Philadelphia. In 1815 he went to Europe to look out for the business interests of the firm, the failure of which in 1818 turned him for good and all to literature. In 1819, in New York, and in 1820, in London, Irving published the book by which he is most popularly known, The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. It was heartily welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic, and two of the stories especially, Rip van Winkle and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, have become classics in American literature. The Sketch-Book soon went through many editions, was illustrated by Caldicott and commentated by Pfundheller for the Germans. The vein of the book is one of humor, tenderness, geniality, and good-fellowship; the manner is reminiscent of Goldsmith and other English authors of the eighteenth century, to whom Irving was temperamentally drawn. In 1822 appeared another volume in much the same manner, Bracebridge Hull, or the Humorists, a series of sketches, translated by Spiker into German in 1826. In 1822 he visited the Rhine, lived for a while in Paris, and again in England in 1824. In 1824 appeared the Tales of a Traveller, a collection of short stories, with the same general good feeling, but with more action. In 1826 Irving went to Spain, remaining there until 1829, and, as a result of his stay, produced four books quite different from his former work: History of the Life and Times of Christopher Columbus (1828); A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829), an interesting narrative, but of no real historical value; Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus (1831); and The Alhambra (1832), a series of sketches and stories associated with the author's life in the romantic ruins of Granada. Irving's book on Columbus was written with the help of Spanish archives, after Irving had given up his original purpose to translate Navarrete's recently published work on the discoverer. The Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada purports to be founded on the manuscripts of Fray Antonio Agapida, an imaginary chronicler. The Alhambra was written mainly in London, where Irving was secretary of the United States Legation from 1829-31. He returned to America in 1832, where he was welcomed with almost national honor; for the people of the United States thought, with good grounds, that he had won recognition abroad of American literature.
In 1841 Irving was appointed United States Minister at Madrid, where he lived from 1843 to 1846, continuing his historical writing with the work on Mahomet. He passed the rest of his life, with the exception of some months of travel in the West, at Sunnyside, his country-seat near Tarrytown, N. Y. Up to 1849 his literary work was inferior to what he had previously done, and is of little value. It consists of The Crayon Miscellany (1835); Astoria (1836); and The Rocky Mountains; or Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West (1837). The work which came toward the end of his life, however, added to his reputation. It was chiefly biographical and historical: Oliver Goldsmith (1849); Mahomet and His Successors (1849-50); Wolfert's Roost (1855); and his long-planned and affectionate Life of Washington (1855-59), which he completed only with the year of his death. He died at Irvington, N. Y., November 28, 1859. Posthumously there appeared The Life and Letters of Washington Irving (1862-63) and ​Spanish Papers and Other Miscellanies (1866), edited by his nephew, P. M. Irving. His Works, in twenty-seven volumes, appeared in New York in 1884-86. Selections from them in English and in German, with illustrations by Ritter and Camphausen, were published in Leipzig in 1856.
Irving is significant in the history of American letters as the first American, after the independence of the United States, to obtain real literary recognition in England. His success, both at home and abroad, he owed to the geniality of his nature, his social gifts, and his literary feeling, all of which enabled him to please an audience schooled in the manner of Addison, Johnson, and Goldsmith, and at the same time to cause no offense to the patriotic sensibilities of his countrymen. Much of his work deals directy with English life and customs, and is written in the manner of a kindly, well-bred Englishman. The influence of Irving upon American letters was hence, in the main, good; it enabled writers to make use of the best English tradition and helped to rid them of the provincialism which had characterized their work up to his coming. He is perhaps best as an essayist, and he will be permanent for his charm and refinement; yet it must not be forgotten that he was practically the discoverer, for Americans at least, of the effectiveness of the short story as a form of art. Nor is Irving's place in English literature unimportant, for he was a link between Goldsmith and Dickens. Indeed, Irving seems rather like an English than like an American author; for, though there is a quaintness in his humor and freshness in his views, he is devoted to English traditions as to form. With Whitman, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain one encounters a more obviously American school.
Bibliography. A fair amount of commentary on Irving exists. In addition to the biography by his nephew, there are Bryant's Discourse on the Life, Character, and Genius of Washington Irving (New York, 1860); Longfellow's Address Before the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1870); Laun's Washington Irving: Ein Lebens- und Charakterbild (Berlin, 1870); a Life in the “American Men of Letters Series,” by C. D. Warner (Boston, 1881); and critical discussions of his work are to be found in the literary histories, such as Beers, Initial Studies in American Letters [Sew York, 1892) ; Richardson, American Literature (ib., 1887-88); Wendell, A Literary History of America (ib., 1900), and others.