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 . . .
Ichabod's encounter with the Headless Horseman is the dramatic climax of the story. The Sketch Book, also contains the classic tale of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving is thoroughly capable of creating pure fiction form his own imagination. Irving began writing satirical letters under the pseudonym "Jonathan Oldstyle. He had rebuilt an old Dutch house near Sleepy Hollow and he named it Sunnyside. Irving also uses the folk tradition as a base for his own imaginings rather than keeping close to the folk versions for the whole story. In three distinct ways, Irving shows his knowledge of folklore. 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). Richard Dana of The North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal has this to say about the story, "Rip Van Winkle" is our favorite amongst the new stories. (248) In this folk tale we see again that Mr. This book satirized early New York theater and poked fun at the political, social, and cultural life of the city. Washington Irving's second book, A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, is narrated by the fictitious Diedrich Knickerbocker.
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