Irving, Washington

(1783–1859) writer; born in New York City. He was educated privately, studied law, and began to write essays for periodicals. He traveled in France and Italy (1804–06), wrote whimsical journals and letters, then returned to New York City to practice law in a haphazard way. He and his brother William Irving and James Kirke Paulding wrote the Salamagundi papers (1807–08), a collection of humorous essays. He first became more widely known for his comic work, A History of New York (1809), written under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker. In 1815 he went to England to work for his brothers' business; when that failed he composed a collection of stories and essays that became The Sketch Book, published under the name "Geoffrey Crayon" (1819–20); they included "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." In 1822 he went to the Continent, living in Germany and France for several years. In 1826 he went to Spain and became attaché at the U.S. embassy in Madrid; while in Spain he did the research for his biography of Christopher Columbus (1828) and his works on Granada (1829) and the Alhambra (1832). He was secretary of the U.S. legation in London between 1829–32. He would return to Spain as the U.S. ambassador (1842–46) but he spent most of the rest of his life at his estate, "Sunnyside," near Tarrytown, N.Y., turning out a succession of mainly historical and biographical works—including a five-volume life of George Washington. Although he never really developed as a literary talent, he has retained his reputation as the first American man of letters.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Irving, Washington

Born Apr. 3, 1783, in New York City; died Nov. 28, 1859, in Tarrytown. American writer; initiator of romanticism and the short story genre in the literature of the USA.

Son of a Scottish-born merchant who had taken part in the North American War of Independence of 1775–83, Irving made his literary debut with a series of humorous sketches on American life. His History of New York (1809), written by the fictitious Diedrich Knickerbocker, is a burlesquely comic chronicle of the city of New York when it was still a small Dutch settlement. The Sketch Book (1819–20) is a medley of short stories, essays, and articles. His Bracebridge Hall (1822) is a book that offers scenes from the lives of residents of a patriarchal English estate. In the Tales of a Traveller (1824) Irving condemned hypocrisy and Puritan intolerance. In the collection The Alhambra (1832) quaint fantasy is no obstacle to his denunciation of despotism. Astoria (1836), however, is a work in which Irving idealizes capitalist expansion westward.

WORKS

Works, vols. 1–12. New York, 1910.
In Russian translation:
Rasskazy i legendy. Moscow-Leningrad, 1939.
Novelty. Moscow, 1954.

REFERENCES

Istoriia amerikanskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947.
Sherstiuk, V. F. “Novelly V. Irvinga 20-kh gg.” Uch. zap. Moskovskogo
oblastnogo ped. in-ta: Zarubezhnaia literatura, 1963, vol. 130.
Warner, C. D. Washington Irving. Port Washington (N. Y.) [1968].

B. A. GILENSON