Washington Irving, the man who is often recognized as America’s first author to earn his living from writing, was born at the end of the American Revolution and died a few years before the Civil War. Washington Irving’s life, appropriately bookended by two major events in his country’s history, would be spent in his native New York and in Europe, with trips to the South and expanding West of the new and growing United States.
The eighth and last surviving child of eleven, Irving was born on April 3, 1783, to a Scottish father and English mother who had immigrated to New York in 1763. With the war winding down, the new baby was given the name of its most famous general. Growing up in bustling New York City, Irving followed the typical path of education for a boy from a merchant-class family, culminating in his passing the bar exam in 1806. By 1809, he had already traveled to Canada and Europe, engaging in humorous and satirical short pieces of writing, achieving early and short-lived fame with his critical commentary of contemporary politics in A History of New York (1809.) The War of 1812 saw Irving serving on the Canadian frontier but the years following the war were restless ones resulting in another trip to Europe in 1815.
In pursuit of a profession, Irving turned to writing again, publishing The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in seven parts (1819–1820.) Well received in his home country, and, later in England, from his English publisher, the famous John Murray, this collection of literary “sketches” included what were to become his most famous works, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” During an extended seventeen-year stay in Europe, he produced many works of Spanish history as well as biographies of Christopher Columbus and the Prophet Muhammad, which were internationally translated and published.
Upon his return to America in 1834, Irving, now a celebrity, traveled through the South and emerging West, publishing accounts of his journeys and adjusting to fame at home. A year later, he bought a tumbledown cottage on the banks of the Hudson and created what was to become his small but elegant permanent home, Sunnyside, which he would share with family members until his death there in 1859. In between, he would continue writing and publishing, return to Europe as a diplomatic representative of his country, and pen his five-volume biography of George Washington. Plagued by continual ailments in later life, Irving died suddenly of a heart attack on November 28, 1859, and was buried nearby at the new Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
Written by Catalina Hannan, Research Librarian for the Historic Hudson Valley
