The first internationally acclaimed American writer, Washington Irving is most famous for his collection of stories known as The Sketchbook, which contains both “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” tales that have become iconic touchstones of American literature and folklore. Irving’s life was marked by a series of sojourns and interludes abroad, and much of his work reflects the influence of his international experiences. The tone of Irving’s best-known and best-loved work is markedly satirical, and he often took on the nom de plume (pen name) and authorial identity of a ridiculous or comic narrator.
Born in New York City in 1783, Irving was the youngest of eleven children, the son of a successful merchant who had taken the Patriot side during the American Revolution. Irving’s brothers Peter and William, both significant men of letters of their age, had a notable effect upon the young Irving. Although he studied law and eventually passed the bar, he did not pursue a legal career with any diligence, and by 1802 he was penning pieces for newspapers edited by his older brother Peter. On November 15, 1802, at the tender age of nineteen, his first in a series of satirical essays appeared, lampooning New York City’s upper-crust society and the fashions and foibles of the young men in this set. Writing under the pseudonym of “Jonathon Oldstyle, Gentleman,” Irving published these pieces in the Morning Chronicle, founded in October of that year by none other than Aaron Burr (himself a mainstay of American folklore and legend after he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804) and edited by Peter Irving. By giving voice to his social criticism through the vehicle of an imaginary, somewhat long-winded, and patently foolish old gentleman, Irving self-consciously adopted a traditional form of American social criticism best exemplified, perhaps, by Benjamin Franklin’s alter-ego Silence Dogood; that he meant this character—and this style—to be seen as old-fashioned is emphasized by the surname “Oldstyle.”
After his first trip to Europe during the years 1804–1806, a journey ostensibly taken to restore his health, Irving continued work in the satirical line with the publication of Salmagundi, a series of pointedly sarcastic essays purported to be the “Whim-Whams and Opinions of Lancelot Langstaff, Esquire, & Others.” Published between 1807 and 1808, Salmagundi was a collaborative effort, drawing upon the talents of Washington Irving, his brothers, William Irving’s brother-in-law Paulding, and a number of other young men belonging to the group known to themselves as the “Nine Worthies,” or the “Lads of Kilkenny.” These lads met both at the watering holes of the city and at what they called “Cockloft Hall,” the New Jersey country estate of Irving’s steadfast friend Gouverneur Kemble, one of their number. “Salmagundi” is defined as a tasty hash of meat, pickled herring, pepper, onions, oil, and vinegar; the essays that make up Salmagundi, as this name suggests, comprise a potent and eclectic mix of political satire and comic social commentary, some of which extended the course charted by Jonathon Oldstyle.
The popular stories and sketches of Washington Irving (1783–1859) made him the first American writer with an international reputation as a man of letters. His two best-known pieces, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” both were contained within The Sketchbook, Irving’s immensely popular 1819–1820 collection of stories. These two narratives, although based loosely on Old World folktales, are nonetheless imbued with a peculiarly New World sensibility, and have become American icons in their own right. They are also arguably the first fully-developed examples of the American short story. (Library of Congress)
It was during this period that Irving conceived of the figure which was to prove to be his most memorable alter ego, the unself-consciously pedantic Dutch-American antiquarian Diedrich Knickerbocker. This figure allowed Irving to develop a comic alternative-reality, which, in addition to ridiculing boring scholars and their fascination with irrelevant details, focused the satirist’s jaundiced gaze upon what he saw as the excesses of Jeffersonian democracy, as well as giving him free rein to comment upon the growing American sense of self and nationhood. Hailed by many as the landmark first great American work of comic fiction, Irving’s History of New York was published in 1809 and sealed Irving’s national reputation as an important figure in American literature. The name of Diedrich Knickerbocker would come up again a decade later with the publication of The Sketchbook, but before then, in April 1809, Irving suffered a great personal loss with the death of his fiancée Matilda Hoffman. Irving never married, and many biographers have attributed that fact to his early loss, although others have noted that Irving had a number of later affairs with women, and perhaps also with men.
Irving became concerned with business interests for the next few years and wrote comparatively little. Appointed to the rank of lieutenant colonel, Irving served briefly and unremarkably during the War of 1812 as an aide to Governor Daniel D. Tompkins of New York, a general in the state’s militia. Not having seen action at all by the conclusion of the war, Irving embarked for England to attend to a family business venture in Liverpool. In 1818, the business failed, and Irving turned back to writing as his profession. It was during this period that he completed The Sketchbook, which was to prove his most enduring work. “Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman,” was the pseudonym under which Irving penned this collection of stories, which was published as a serial in the United States from 1819 to 1820 and as a book in Britain in 1820.
The sly humor, elegant style, and Romantic mode of The Sketchbook made it an instant success at home and abroad, casting Irving into the limelight as the first American international literary star. “Sketchbook” in the title is an allusion to the tradition among young men of the elite classes, such as Irving, of taking a “Grand Tour” of Europe as the summation of their cultural educations; in the days before photography, such travelers would keep notebooks full of drawings of and commentary upon their journeys. “Crayon” is also a significant name in such a case, as it refers not to the children’s crayons of our age, but rather to an artist’s pencils, chalks, or other methods of drawing in a portfolio. The Sketchbook, as its name suggests, mostly contained Irving’s “sketches” in prose of his impressions of England. Several of the sketches, however, took as their topics American locations and themes; of these, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” have proven by far the most popular and enduring. Each took as its basis a bit of Old World European folklore transplanted into the New World frontier of the American landscape, and each tale was purported to have been found by Geoffrey Crayon within the historical notes and papers of none other than Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving’s imaginary Dutch-American amateur historian. Thus Irving employed a clever “narrator within a narrator” technique, to lend both the semblance of a certain distance and a sense of veracity to the telling of these stories.
New York Knickerbockers
The surname of Washington Irving’s most famous fictitious narrator may have come from an old New York family that came to America during the late seventeenth century. Irving may simply have found the sound of the name amusing, but due to his use of it, “Knickerbocker” has come to signify Old Dutch New York; the name has taken on new life through the NBA’s Knicks. Irving did not know Albany lawyer and U.S. congressman Herman Knickerbocker when he created Diedrich, although the two later became friends. The pedantic style and obsession with inconsequential detail associated with Diedrich Knickerbocker, on the other hand, may have been based upon the personality of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell, whom Peter Irving knew personally through his medical studies at Columbia. Irving’s A History of New York is in some measure a parody of Mitchell’s Picture of New York.
C. Fee
Irving followed The Sketchbook with a number of plays in Paris and in 1822, with another collection of stories, this one entitled Bracebridge Hall, which was very popular in its day, if largely overlooked by generations to come. Irving continued to travel and live abroad, which provided even more material for his storytelling. He sojourned in Germany in 1822 and 1823, served with the American diplomatic mission in Spain throughout the late 1820s, and subsequently filled a post in London until 1832. His published works from this period include the highly criticized Tales of a Traveller (1824), his popular History of the Life & Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829), and his Spanish masterpiece, The Alhambra (1832). Although meant as a scholarly work, Irving’s book on Columbus participated in yet another wellspring of American myth, legend, and folklore, and in The Alhambra he collected Spanish folktales in a manner reminiscent of The Sketchbook. Upon his return to the United States, Irving made a trip west to see the American frontier, a trip that was to result in a number of works, including A Tour on the Prairies, published in 1835 and as a part of The Crayon Miscellany, Astoria in 1836, and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, USA in 1837. Irving returned as a diplomat to Spain in 1842, and after three tumultuous years there, spent a final year on a diplomatic mission to London. He then returned home, working on additional sketches and biographies, including his five-volume Life of Washington, until his death in 1859. Hailed as a giant of American letters during his own time and recognized as an icon thereafter, Irving is especially notable for his employment of American folklore, and for the way his commercial success inspired many other writers to extend and enrich the American folklore tradition.
C. Fee
See also Folklore and Folktales; Headless Horseman; Rip Van Winkle; Scary Stories
Further Reading
Burstein, Andrew. 2007. The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving. New York: Basic Books.
Hart, James David, and Phillip Leininger. 2004. “Irving, Washington.” In The Oxford Companion to American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Irving, Washington. 2009. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., edited by Susan Manning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jones, Brian Jay. 2008. Washington Irving: An American Original. New York: Arcade.
Irving, Washington—Primary Document
Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the United States was still very much in its infancy. Many of Washington Irving’s tales reflect a not-so-distant past when New York was still a British colony with a very distinct Dutch subculture. The story of “Rip Van Winkle,” while on one level an amusing story of a man keen to escape from his overbearing wife, reflects the cultural upheaval that independence brought. In this segment, Rip’s drunken sleep causes him to miss this pivotal event in American history. He awakens postindependence, thoroughly perplexed and confused.
II
On waking he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes—it was a bright, sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. “Surely,” thought Rip, “I have not slept here all night.” He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor—the mountain ravine—the wild retreat among the rocks—the woe-begone party at ninepins—the flagon—“Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!” thought Rip; “what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle?”
He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean, well-oiled fowling piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave revelers of the mountain had put a trick upon him and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him, and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.
He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening’s gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. “These mountain beds do not agree with me,” thought Rip, “and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.” With some difficulty he got down into the glen; he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.
At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheater; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high, impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad, deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man’s perplexities. What was to be done?—the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.
As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!
He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors—strange faces at the windows—everything was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Catskill Mountains—there ran the silver Hudson at a distance—there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been. Rip was sorely perplexed. “That flagon last night,” thought he, “has addled my poor head sadly!”
It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay—the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed. “My very dog,” sighed Rip, “has forgotten me!”
Source: Irving, Washington. “Rip Van Winkle.” Reprinted in John C. Metcalf. The Literary World Seventh Reader. Richmond: Johnson Publishing Company, 1919.