Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Writings (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (2 page)

By the age of nineteen he was writing witty stories and sketches for local journals. His series
Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent.
was published in 1802 in the
Morning Chronicle,
a weekly edited by his brother Peter. In 1807, after a two-year tour of Europe, he began a similarly tongue-in-cheek series of sketches,
Salmagundi; or, The Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff & Others,
which he coauthored with his brother William and their friend James Kirke Paulding. Two years later Irving’s mock history of Dutch colonization,
A History of New York,
was published; full of fascinating historical details and ribald comic portraits, it gained instant notoriety. This period was also one of personal hardship and depression for Irving. His fiancée, Matilda Hoffman, died of tuberculosis in 1809; a few years later, the War of 1812 devastated the family import business. Irving sailed to London in 1815 to begin a second tour of Europe but found himself instead in Liverpool, helping his brother attempt to salvage the remains of their company.

When P. & E. Irving went bankrupt in 1818, Irving determined to earn a living through his writing. He met Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott, who took the young author under his wing, introducing him to such literati as Mary Shelley and Lord Byron. Irving scored an immediate triumph with
The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
published in 1819. The work—which contains his best-known tales, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”—was an international success.

In 1826 Irving was appointed a diplomatic attaché to the American embassy in Madrid. Ever curious to understand his environment, he began researching Spanish history and customs.
The Conquest of Granada
was published in 1829, and
The Alhambra
followed in 1832.

Irving finally returned to America in 1832, after a seventeen-year absence. He made an adventurous trip through the American West, which he chronicled in
A Tour of the Prairies
(1835), and then built his home, Sunnyside, along the picturesque banks of the Hudson River north of New York City. Irving traveled again to Europe in 1842 to serve as the American minister to Spain, a position he held until 1846. Otherwise he remained at Sunnyside, where he continued to write. He published many more stories and sketches as well as a five-volume biography of his namesake, George Washington. Washington Irving died at home on November 28, 1859.

In April 1789, George Washington arrived in New York City for his inauguration as the first president of the newly formed republic of the United States. He met with a hero’s welcome. In the weeks that followed, well-wishers and admirers regularly approached him in the streets, among them a Scottish-born woman who cornered him in a shop on Broadway. Drawing before her a six-year-old child, she exclaimed, “Please, Your Excellency, here’s a bairn that’s called after ye.” It was Washington Irving. In retrospect, the scene seemed prophetic. Later in life, after having established a reputation as the first American man of letters, Irving recalled in an interview how Washington “laid his hand upon my head, and gave me his blessing” (Williams,
The Life of Washington Irving,
vol. 1, p. 10; see “For Further Reading”). Three generations after the Revolutionary War, George Washington was revered as the father of our country. Irving likewise was recognized as a founding father of America’s national literature.

Such a title might strike today’s reader as an exaggeration. Irving’s best-known characters, Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane, do not seem substantial enough to serve as foundational figures in an American literary tradition. However, the stories Irving set in Sleepy Hollow, a secluded village in the Hudson River Valley, provided American culture with a local habitation and a name. Along with James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant, Irving was one of America’s pioneer writers. He helped sketch the contours of a cultural landscape that was unique to the United States, not a pale imitation of the literature of England and Europe. Sleepy Hollow is an early example of American authors self-consciously setting out to create an imaginative space for artistic creativity. Nathaniel Hawthorne described this sort of space in his introduction to
The Scarlet Letter
as “a neutral territory, somewhere between the real-world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other” (Hawthorne,
The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
vol. 1, p. 36). By providing such a “neutral territory” for his readers, Irving contributed to the new nation’s efforts to generate a collective cultural memory from native sources.

In the wake of the American Revolution, as the Constitution was being ratified, the general public sentiment was that a distinctively American literature was essential for the success of America’s democratic experiment. For what did the states share in common other than their opposition to colonial rule? As Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay were publishing
The Federalist
to promulgate common political principles and beliefs for the nation’s citizens, American authors were also being called on to promote a common set of cultural values. “America must be as independent in
literature
as she is in
politics;”
Noah Webster declared, ”as famous for arts as she is for arms” (Spencer,
The Quest for Nationality,
p. 27). However, the barriers to such cultural independence were formidable. Because there was no international copyright law, American booksellers could reprint English editions without paying royalties. As a result, the literary marketplace was flooded with foreign works. Why publish—or purchase, for that matter—the work of an American writer when one could have the writings of the best-known authors of Britain and Europe for little more than the cost of paper and ink? Magazines and newspapers also capitalized on this situation by reprinting poetry, essays, and criticism culled from the latest British periodicals. An odd phenomenon began to occur: In order for American authors to win approval from the American public, they first had to establish a critical reputation in the British press.