Washington Irving was born in New York City
(near present-day Wall Street) at the end of the Revolutionary War on
April 3, 1783. His parents, Scottish-English immigrants, were great
admirers of General George Washington, and named their son after their
hero.
Irving had many interests including writing,
architecture and landscape design, traveling, and diplomacy. He is best
known, however, as the first American to make a living solely from
writing. Initially, he wrote under pen names; one was "Diedrich
Knickerbocker." In 1809, using this pen name, Irving wrote A History of
New-York that describes and pokes fun at the lives of the early Dutch
settlers of Manhattan. Eventually, this pen name came to mean a person
from New York, and is where the basketball team The New York
Knickerbockers (Knicks)got its name.
Irving enjoyed visiting different places and a
large part of his life was spent in Europe, particularly England,
France, Germany, and Spain. He often wrote about the places he visited.
For example, Bracebridge Hall (1822) is a view of life in England, and
The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), is about the
Italian explorer who sailed under the Spanish flag. However, in spite of
his foreign travels, Irving's imagination frequently drew upon his
childhood memories of New York State. These memories are reflected in
letters that he wrote to family and friends from Europe, as well as in
the stories from his most famous work, The Sketch-Book. Published in
1819 under another pen name, "Geoffrey Crayon, Gent," The Sketch-Book
includes the short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van
Winkle. The fictional Sleepy Hollow is actually the lower Hudson Valley
area near Tarrytown, N.Y., and Rip Van Winkle sleeps through the entire
Revolutionary War in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York.
By the late 1820s, Irving had gained a
reputation throughout Europe and America as a great writer and thinker.
Because of his popularity, Irving received many important honors. This
Spanish were so pleased with Irving's writing that in 1828, they elected
him to the Real Academia de la Historia. In 1830, Irving received a
gold medal in history from the Royal Society of Literature in London,
and also received honorary degrees from Oxford, Columbia, and Harvard.
Trained as a lawyer, Irving was active in the
field of diplomacy. In 1842, American President Tyler appointed him
Minister to Spain - a position we would now call ambassador. This meant
he traveled throughout Europe as a diplomatic representative of the
United States.
Feeling a desire to be among fellow Americans
and his family, in 1832 Irving returned from Europe to New York where
he established his home Sunnyside in Tarrytown. Irving never married or
had children. Rather, for the next twenty-five years he shared
Sunnyside with his brother Ebenezer and Ebenezer's five daughters.
During this period, when Irving traveled or was sent on a diplomatic
mission, he always had a home and family to which to return.
Sunnyside was visited by many artists,
politicians, writers, and other influential people. Irving's home was
publicized throughout the world in lithographs, magazines, and tourists
maps. Images of Sunnyside could even be found on cigar boxes, sheet
music, and ceramic pitchers.
On November 28, 1859, on the eve of the Civil
War, Washington Irving died at Sunnyside surrounded by his family. He
was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at the Old Dutch Church in
Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.