Washinton Irving
Washington Irving Washington Irving was the first native American to succeed as a professional writer. He remains important as a pioneer in American humor and the development of the short story. Irving was greatly admired and imitated in the 19th century. Toward the end of his career, his reputation declined due to the sentimentality and excessive gentility of much of his work ("Irving" 479). Washington Irving's time spent in the Hudson Valley and abroad contributed to his writing of The Devil and Tom Walker, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Rip Van Winkle. Irving was born in New York City on April 3, 1783, the youngest of eleven children in a merchant family. Unlike his brothers, Irving did not attend nearby Columbia College, instead he was apprenticed in 1801 to a lawyer. In 1806, he passed the bar examination, but remained financially dependent on his family until the publication of The Sketch Book. In the meantime, Irving did odd jobs for the family as agent and lobbyist. It seems like he worked as little as possible, and for years pursued an amateur or semiprofessional interest in literature ("Irving" 479). In his free time, he read avidly and wandered when he could in the misty, rolling Hudson River valley, an ar
In this folk tale we see again that Mr. Irving has used his background to basically retell a story that he might have heard as a child. Also in, "The Devil and Tom Walker," which, despite its wildly improbable plot, foreshadows the best of Hawthornes's fictional exposure of Yankee shrewdness and Puritan hypocrisy (Ferguson 391). The Sketch Book, also contains the classic tale of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." This is the story of Ichabod Crane, which is from Hebrew meaning "inglorious," or literally, "without honor" (Bone 4). Ichabod's encounter with the Headless Horseman is the dramatic climax of the story. In the folktale of German origin Irving has once again transplanted the story to take places in the Hudson Valley of New York and achieved something more than the routine tale of suspense or the bizarre anecdote ("Irving" 480). His descriptions of Sleepy Hollow and the people were so realistic and homey that old timers of the lower Hudson River claimed to have known Brom Bones himself (Rodes 248). ". . . Irving is thoroughly capable of creating pure fiction form his own imagination. He is especially good at elaborating and embroidering the skeleton of a local folk tradition . . .," says Sara Rodes (247). Another tale from The Sketch Book, "Rip Van Winkle" is an American version of an ancient folk tale in which Irving keeps very close to the folk version and with which he makes his greatest contribution to and use of American folklore. Richard Dana of The North American Review and Miscellaneous Journa
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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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