Washington Irving

1783-1859

Life

Homes

Occupations

Chronology

Issues and themes

Before the Revolutionary War, American literature--from Christopher Columbus's travel accounts to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography--had been primarily nonfictional narratives, sermons, essays, diaries, and imitations of English verse, most of it written in private or shared in small circles. With the political revolution against England, however, came a cultural revolution, and Americans slowly began to build an independent cultural identity, which included a strong literary component. For the first time, America had a significant number of men and women of letters--that is, writers who created works appreciated for their aesthetic value and who made a career or at least a serious avocation of literature. The first of these writers was Washington Irving, whose Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, first published in 1819, was a sensation in England and helped build the United States' reputation for creative literature. Over the remainder of his career, which included Tales of the Alhambra and many other books, Irving was the most famous and most widely respected literary figure in America. Thanks in part to developments in publishing technology, Irving also was one of the few Americanss to make substantial money from writing. By 1829, he had made more than $23,000 from his writing, and he eventually bought the plates from which his works were published in order to protect his own rights to proceeds from them.

A transitional figure, Irving somewhat ironically contributed to America's literary independence while producing work that was distinctively European in content and style. Like his contemporary James Fenimore Cooper, Irving proved that Americans could write European literature as well as Europeans could. His masterful use of personae, stylized prose, and use of European legend all demonstrate the strong influence of the Old World on his work. Indeed, the sketches and tales in The Sketch Book show Irving's affection for the antiquity of Europe and for the past in general. This attention to the past, as Irving scholar William P. Kelly has noted, was one reason for Irving's success with his American audience. Kelly points out that Americans, recently severed from their European heritage, were struggling with an identity crisis at the time they were reading Irving's work, which itself looks both forward and backward. (xii). Another striking characteristic of Irving's writing is the preponderance of imagery. A painter himself, Irving often drew verbal pictures in his essays and stories, and the title of his most famous work makes a double reference to visual art: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon.

Work

"Rip Van Winkle"

Bibliography

© Mark Canada, 1997

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