Washington Irving
Religion, Romanticism, & Reform Project
Biography
His most famous, however, was writing as he was the first American to make a living solely from writing. He adopted a pseudonym, Dietrich Knickerbocker, under which he wrote A History of New York, a humorous portrayal of Dutch settlers in early Manhattan.
By 1815, Irving returned to Europe where he stayed for 17 years. In 1820, he published "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." A collection of short stories, it included both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, his most famous stories which allowed him to pursue a full-time career as a writer.
Thus by the 1820s, Irving began receiving international fame as a great thinker and writer, earning several honorary degrees from prominent colleges. The Spanish even elected him to the Real Academia de la Historia in 1828.
In 1832, he returned back home to Sunnyside, which became quite an attraction to many later on, to New York. In 1842, he was elected by President John Tyler as minister to Spain. He finally died in 1859, right before the Civil War, and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
Washington Irving never married or had children.
Washington Irving
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Rip Van Winkle
Common Themes and Subject Matter
The American Revolution is also present in both the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle (Rip Van Winkle actually sleeps throughout the entire war). Perhaps one could deduce more about his subject matter, such as a "transition from a feudal to a bourgeois society" (Goldman), but these are ambiguous and open to interpretation