Washington irving (1783-1859)

Irving is the first American classic and the first American writer to achieve international fame. He is also credited with showing that the short story is the American literary form par excellence.

Washington Irving was born in New York City into a wealthy merchant family. He was educated for law but after his return from his first journey abroad he was engaged in the family business. In the war between Great Britain and the USA (1812-1815) he participated as an officer and a reporter. From 1815 to 1817 he was in England for family business. Having met Sir Walter Scott and having become acquainted with imaginative German literature he was to introduce a new Romantic note in his works. When the business failed he devoted himself fully to writing. In 1842-46 Irving held the post of American ambassador to Spain

The beginning of his literary career is History of New York (1809), a whimsical combination of romantic articles, sketches on political and social themes, fantastic and lyrical stories. They are told under the name of Dietrich Knickerbocker, a burlesque history that mocked pedantic scholarship and the old Dutch families, which gave him a reputation as a humorist. Dietrich Knickerbocker is an old Dutch gentleman of New York. The name of this fictitious character was later adopted by a group of New York writers of the period, among whom Irving, Cooper, and Bryant were the foremost Knickerbockers. In 1819-1820 was published The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayen, Gent where six sketches have an American setting and of these the best two are Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Irving is generally considered the father of the American short story. In his short stories, Irving usually starts with standard characters, such as lazy husbands, nagging wives, etc. But a choice of incidents and descriptive details adds a note of symbolism to the basic themes, helping to create an almost Gothic atmosphere. The peculiarity of Irving’s works lies in the masterly combination of realistic descriptions and details with humour and fantasy, which add entertainment and fascination to the plot.

Irving got the idea for his most famous story Rip Van Winkle from a German legend about a sleeping emperor, which he points out in a mock-scholarly note added to the end of the story. Rip Van Winkle, at one point of the story, gets lost in an enchanted forest, but the ghosts he meets prove to be silent and indifferent. Rip Van Winkle falls into a 20-year sleep but turns his misfortune into an advantage. First, he escapes 20 years of nagging by his wife. Second, he makes a great success though he is a not a hard worker. Rather, he is a loafer, a gossip, a dreamer. Rip would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. People from the Dutch community of New York, to which he belonged, were just as thrifty as the Puritans from whom Franklin had got many of his ideas. They, too, believed in working hard and in saving money. However, Irving made his hero the complete opposite of the ideal. The writer emphasized Rip’s other qualities: he is always ready to help his neighbour and is liked by children. Eventually Rip seems to be happy in his new surroundings but, in its contrast between old and new American society, the tale is a mild criticism of new America.