Washington Irving

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Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, and diplomat of the early 19th century.

He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his collection Geoffrey Crayon Gent's Geoffrey Crayon Gent's collection "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon Gent."

Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and George Washington's biographies, as well as many histories of 15th-century Spain addressing topics such as Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors are among his historical works. Irving served as Spain's ambassador from 1842 to 1846.

He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters sent to the Morning Chronicle under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle.

In 1815, he returned to England for his family business, where he made his name with the introduction of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which appeared from 1819–20.

He continued to publish regularly throughout his life, and he wrote a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death in Tarrytown, New York, at age 76. Irving was one of the first American writers to receive acclaim in Europe, and he influenced other American writers, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Charles Dickens, Francis Jeffrey, and Walter Scott also admired him.

He advocated for writing as a legitimate occupation and called for stricter measures to shield American writers from copyright abuse.

Early years

William Irving Sr., a native of Quholm, Shapinsay, Orkney, Scotland, and Sarah (née Saunders), was a student at the University of Falmouth, Cornwall, England. They married in 1761 when William was serving as a petty officer in the British Navy. They had eleven children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. Both their first two sons died in infancy, as did their fourth son John. William Jr. (1766), Ann (1771), Peter (1771), Ebenezer (1778), and Washington were among the children's living children of William Jr. (1766), Ann (1774), Catherine (1778), and Washington (1780).

The Irving family lived in Manhattan and was part of the city's merchant class. Washington was born on April 3, 1783, the same week as New York City residents learned of the British pact that ended the American Revolution. After George Washington, Irving's mother named him. Irving was born in New York at the age of 6 when George Washington was proclaimed President in 1789. Irving had an encounter with young Irving, which was immortalized in a tiny watercolor painting that now hangs in his house.

At the time of Washington's birth, the Irvings lived at 131 William Street but later moved to 128 William St.; many of Irving's brothers supported him financially as he pursued his writing career.

Irving, an uninterested student who loved adventure stories and drama, would often sneak out of class in the evenings to attend the theater by the time he was 14. In 1798, a yellow fever outbreak in Manhattan caused his family to escrow him, where he stayed with his friend James Kirke Paulding in Tarrytown, New York. It was in Tarrytown that he became familiar with Sleepy Hollow, New York, with its Dutch customs and local ghost tales. As an adolescent, he made several trips up the Hudson, including an extended visit to Johnstown, New York, where he passed through the Catskill Mountains area, the setting for "Rip Van Winkle." "The Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination," Irving wrote.

When Irving was 19, he began writing letters to the New York Morning Chronicle in 1802, launching commentaries on the city's social and theatre scene under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. The name evoked his Federalist leanings and became the first of many pseudonyms he employed throughout his career. Irving gained early fame and modest notoriety thanks to his letters. Aaron Burr, a co-publisher of the Chronicle, was inspired enough to give clippings of the Oldstyle pieces to his daughter Theodosia. Charles Brockden Brown went to New York to try to recruit Oldstyle for a literary journal he was editing in Philadelphia.

Irving's brothers, who were worried about his health, financed an extended tour of Europe from 1804 to 1806. To his displeasure, his brother William, who wrote that he was pleased that his brother's health was improving, he skipped most of the sites and locations that were considered vital for a young man's social growth, but he did not like the option to "gallop through Italy." Rather, Irving honed the social and conversational skills that made him one of the world's most in-demand guests. "I try to take things as they come with jules," Irving wrote. "I can't get a dinner to fit my palate, so I try to get a glimpse to complement my dinner." Irving developed a friendship with painter Washington Allston during his visit to Rome in 1805 and was nearly forced to work as a painter. "My lot in life, on the other hand, was not as expected."

Irving moved from Europe to study law with his legal mentor Judge Josiah Ogden Hoffman in New York City. He was not a good student by his own admission and barely passed the bar exam in 1806. He began socializing with a group of literate young men, whom he referred to as "The Lads of Kilkenny," and he founded the literary journal Salmagundi in January 1807 with his brother William and his partner James Kirke Paulding, who worked under various pseudonyms, including William Wizard and Launcelot Langstaff. Irving lampooned New York culture and politics in a way that mimics the 20th century Mad magazine. Salmagundi was a modest success, extending Irving's name and brand outside of New York. In its 17th issue, dated November 11, 1807, he gave New York City the name "Gotham," which means "Goat's Town" in Anglo-Saxon terms.

Irving finished A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), while mourning the death of Matilda Hoffman, a 17-year-old fiancée. It was his first big book and a satire on local history and contemporary politics. Irving began a prank by insertion of a string of missing people ads in New York newspapers looking for details on Diedrich Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian who had reportedly vanished from his hotel in New York City before its publication. He sent the hotel's owner a note advising readers that if Mr. Knickerbocker didn't return to the hotel to pay his bill, he'd write a book that Knickerbocker had left behind.

Some New York city officials were worried enough about Knickerbocker and his book to give them a certificate for his safe return. Irving then published A History of New York on December 6, 1809, under the Knickerbocker pseudonym, with immediate critical and popular success. "It took with the public," Irving said, "and gave me fame as an original work was something new and unusual in America." Diedrich Knickerbocker was a common nickname for Manhattan residents in general, and the New York Knickerbockers basketball team adopted it.

Irving began looking for a career and eventually became an editor of Analectic Magazine, where he wrote biographies of naval heroes like James Lawrence and Oliver Perry. He was also one of the first magazine editors to reprint Francis Scott Key's poem "Defense of Fort McHenry," which was also known as "The Star-Spangled Banner." Irving was opposed to the War of 1812 like many other merchants, but the British assault on Washington, D.C. in 1814 convinced him to enlist. He served on the staff of Daniel Tompkins, governor of New York and administrator of the New York State Militia, but he saw no real action outside of a reconnaissance trip in the Great Lakes area. Many American merchants, including Irving's family, were killed in the war, and he moved to England in mid-1815 to save the family trading business. For the next 17 years, he lived in Europe.

Irving spent the next two years trying to save the family business financially, but eventually had to declare bankruptcy. He continued writing into 1817 and 1818, with no work prospects. He visited Walter Scott in the summer of 1817, establishing a lifetime of personal and professional relationships.

While staying with his sister Sarah and her partner Henry van Wart in Birmingham, England, a place that inspired other works as well. Irving's brother William, who died in October 1818, applied for Irving as chief clerk to the United States Navy and encouraged him to return home. Irving turned down the opportunity to pursue a writing career, opting to remain in England.

Irving sent a collection of short prose pieces to his brother Ebenezer in New York in the spring of 1819, titled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon Gent. The first installment, which included "Rip Van Winkle," was a huge success, and the remainder of the collection, which includes "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," will appear in New York's seventh issue and the second volume of the London edition;

Irving, like many successful writers of the time, was struggling with literary bootleggers. Some of his drawings were reprinted in periodicals without his author's permission in England, a legal matter in the absence of a worldwide copyright law at the time. Irving paid to have the first four American installments published as a single volume by John Miller in London, to discourage further piracy in the United Kingdom.

Irving appealed to Walter Scott for assisting in the finding of a more reputable publisher for the remainder of the book. Scott referred Irving to his own publisher, London powerhouse John Murray, who accepted The Sketch Book. Irving will continue to publish in the United States and Britain to protect his copyright, with Murray as his English publisher of choice.

Irving's name soared, and he lived an active social life in Paris and Great Britain for the next two years, where he was often described as an anomaly of literature: an upstart American who dared to write well in English.

Irving and publisher John Murray were keen to follow up on The Sketch Book's success in 1821, spending significant time in Dutch and German folk stories. Irving began slowly, eventually delivering a completed manuscript to Murray in March 1822, despite being frustrated by writer's block and devastated by his brother William's death. Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists, A Medley, was published in June 1822 (the site was based heavily on Aston Hall, which was occupied by members of the Bracebridge family near his sister's home in Birmingham).

The style of Bracebridge was similar to that of The Sketch Book, with Irving Crayon as Crayon, narrating a series of more than 50 short stories and essays. Although some commentators expected Bracebridge to be a poor imitate of The Sketch Book, readers and commentators alike applauded the book. "We have gotten so much pleasure from this book," writer Francis Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review wrote, "we feel connected to it." Irving was drained at its reception, which helped solidify his name among European readers.

Irving, who was still struggling with writer's blockade, migrated to Germany, settling in Dresden in the winter of 1822. He dazzled the royal family and attached himself to Amelia Foster, an American who lives in Dresden with her five children. Irving was particularly attracted to Foster's Emily, an 18-year-old girl who is fighting for her hand. Emily refused to marry in the spring of 1823.

He returned to Paris and began collaborating with playwright John Howard Payne on translating French plays for the English stage, but with no success. He also discovered through Payne that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was romantically interested in him, although Irving never pursued the relationship.

Irving published Tales of a Traveller in August 1824, which included the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker"—under his Geoffrey Crayon persona. Irving told his sister, "I believe there are some of the finest things I have ever written." However, although the book was sold well, critics who mocked both Traveller and its author dismissed Traveller. The public has been encouraged to expect better things," the United States Literary Gazette wrote, though the New-York Mirror pronounced Irving "overrated." Irving returned to Paris after being discouraged about finances and scribbling down plans for proposals that never materialized, feeling sad and sad.

Irving Hill Everett wrote to him on January 30, 1826, when he was in Paris. Everett, the American Minister to Spain, pleaded with Irving to join him in Madrid, noting that a number of manuscripts dealing with the Spanish conquest of the Americas had just been released recently. Irving left for Madrid and eagerly began to search the Spanish archives for colorful art.

Irving began working on several books at once, having full access to the American consul's vast library of Spanish history. A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, the first offspring of this hard work, was published in January 1828. The book was in demand in the United States and Europe, and there will be 175 editions published before the century's end. On the title page, it was also Irving's first attempt to be published under his own name rather than a pseudonym. Irving was allowed to stay at the Duke of Gorman's palace, who gave him free access to many medieval manuscripts. A year later, a chronicle of the Conquest of Granada was published, followed by Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus in 1831.

Irving's writings on Columbus are a mash-up of history and fantasy, a trend that has recently been described as romantic history. Irving based them on extensive research in the Spanish archives, but also added fun elements aimed at sharpening the story. The first of these works is the source of the persistent belief that medieval Europeans assumed that the Earth was flat. Columbus claimed that the Earth was round, according to the famous book.

Irving was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1829. "Until I get some writings related to the place," he said, as he entered Granada's ancient palace Alhambra. He had been informed of his appointment as Secretary to the American Legation in London before he could write anything. Irving left Spain for England in July 1829, afraid he would disappoint families and relatives if he turned down the position.

Irving, who was arriving in London, was a member of American Minister Louis McLane. McLane immediately assigned the daily secretary to a different individual, and Irving was hired by McLane to fill the position of aide de camp. The two men fought over the next year to reach an agreement between the US and the British West Indies, finally settling in August 1830. Irving was honoured by the Royal Society of Literature in 1831, followed by an honorary doctorate of civil law from Oxford.

Following McLane's recall to the United States in 1831 to serve as Treasury Secretary of Treasury, Irving stayed on as the legation's chargée d'affaires until the arrival of Martin Van Buren, President Andrew Jackson's nominee for British Minister. Irving resigned from writing, eventually finishing Tales of the Alhambra, which would be published simultaneously in both England and Japan in 1832.

When Van Buren learned that the US Senate had declined to confirm him as the new Minister, he was still in London. Consoling Van Buren, Irving, expected that the Senate's partisan move would go backward. "I should not be surprised" if this election in the Senate goes far toward elevating him to the presidential chair," Irving said.

Irving arrived in New York on May 21, 1832, after 17 years in foreign countries. He and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Henry Leavitt Ellsworth were on a surveying trip in September with companions Charles La Trobe and Count Albert de Pourtales, and the two traveled deep into Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Irving traveled through Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, where he became acquainted with writer and novelist John Pendleton Kennedy at the end of his western tour.

Irving was frustrated with poor investments, so he turned to writing to earn more money, starting with A Tour on the Prairies, which related to his recent travels across the prairies. Irving's first book written and published in the United States after A History of New York in 1809 was another popular success, as well as the first book written and published by Irving in the United States. In 1834, fur magnate John Jacob Astor, who persuaded him to write a history of his fur trade colony in Astoria, Oregon, was contacted. Irving penned in on Astor's scheme, exporting Astoria, a fawning biographical account. Irving, Astor, and a few others founded the Saint Nicholas Society in New York in 1835.

Irving was fascinated with his maps and tales of the territories outside of the Rocky Mountains during a long stay at Astor's home. Bonneville sold his maps and rough notes to Irving for $1,000 after the two men met in Washington, D.C. several months later. Irving's 1837 book The Adventures of Captain Bonneville based on these materials. These three books were part of Irving's "western" series of books and were published partly as a response to criticism that his stay in England and Spain made him more European than American. James Fenimore Cooper and Philip Freneau, among other critics, felt he had turned against American roots in favour of English aristocracy. Irving's western books, including A Tour on the Prairies, were well-received in the United States, although British commentators accused him of "book-making."

Irving bought a "neglected cottage" and its immediate riverfront property in Tarrytown, New York, which he named Sunnyside in 1841. It needed constant maintenance and upgrading over the next 20 years, and with rising costs, he reluctantly agreed to become a regular contributor to The Knickerbocker magazine in 1839, writing new essays and short stories under the Knickerbocker and Crayon pseudonyms. He was regularly approached by aspiring young writers for support or endorsement, including Edgar Allan Poe, who sought Irving's remarks on "William Wilson" and "The Fall of the House of Usher."

A lady of Charleston, South Carolina, a passage in The Crayon Miscellany, 1837, drew a visitor who was newly elected bishop to Demerara, and wondered if it accurately represented Catholic teaching or practice.

The passage under "Newstead Abbey" read:

"Implicitly supported the probe into the truth" and promised to update in future editions of the misrepresentation complaint, according to Clancy. Clancy arrived in England and carried a letter of introduction from Irving, he was able to visit the paper to which Irving had alluded. Clancy discovered that it was, in fact, not an exemption from any ecclesiastical authority, but a pardon from the king to certain groups suspected of violating "forest laws." Clancy pleaded for the local pastor to submit his findings to Catholic periodicals in England, and finally, send a copy to Irving after publication. Since the disputed text remains in the 1849 version, whether or not this has been carried out is unclear.

Irving also defended America's evolving literature by promoting tighter copyright legislation to shield writers from the kind of piracy that had previously plagued The Sketch Book. He openly supported copyright legislation in Congress's January 1840 issue of Knickerbocker. "We have a young literature," he wrote. "Spring up and daily unfolding itself with awesome energy and luxuriance, which... deserving all of its nurturing care." The bill, on the other hand, did not pass at the time.

Irving was elected an Honorary Academician to the National Academy of Design in 1841. During Dickens' American tour in 1842, he began a friendly correspondence with Charles Dickens and hosted Dickens and his wife at Sunnyside.

After an endorsement from Secretary of State Daniel Webster, President John Tyler named Irving as Minister to Spain in February 1842. "It will be a long time for me to be absent from myself for a few days from my beloved little Sunnyside," Irving said, "but it will be back to it with greater ease." He hoped that his post as Minister would give him ample time to write, but Spain was in the midst of political turmoil during the bulk of his tenure, with a variety of rebel factions competing for control of the 12-year-old Queen Isabella II. Although Spain's capital changed through Espartero, Bravo, and Narváez, Irving maintained strong links with the various generals and politicians as the dictatorship of Spain shifted through Espartero, Bravo, and Narváez. Espartero was then embroiled in a power fight against the Spanish Cortes. Irving's official reports on the ensuing civil war and revolution expressed his fascination with the regent as the regent's knight protector. He wrote with an anti-Republican, undiplomatic bias. Although Espartero, who was deposed in July 1843, remained a fallen hero in his eyes, Irving began to view Spanish affairs more realistically. Nevertheless, the politics and war were exhausting, and Irving was both sick and suffering from a crippling skin disease.

Irving continued to closely monitor the progress of the new government and Isabella's fate, as the political situation remained relatively stable in Spain. Following the Spanish parliament's discussion over the slave trade, his official duties as Spanish Minister Rafael Castro were also involved in negotiating American trade relations with Cuba. Louis McLane, the American Minister to the Court of St. James, in London, was also sent to assist with settling the Anglo-American conflict over the Oregon frontier, which newly elected President James K. Polk had promised to address.

Irving returned from Spain in September 1846, took up residence in Sunnyside and began work on an "Author's Revised Version" of his publisher George Palmer Putnam's "Author's Revised Edition." Irving had signed a deal that guaranteed him 12 percent of the retail price of all copies sold, an arrangement that was unprecedented at the time. He continued to write often while editing his older works for Putnam, including biographies of Oliver Goldsmith in 1849 and Islamic prophet Muhammad in 1850. In 1855, he published Wolfert's Roost, a collection of stories and essays he had written for The Knickerbocker and other publications, as well as a book about his namesake George Washington, which he aspired to be his masterpiece. Between 1855 and 1859, five volumes of the biography were published.

Irving travelled to Mount Vernon and Washington, D.C., for his study, and forged friendships with Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce. In 1855, he was named an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1848, he was hired as an executor of John Jacob Astor's estate and named by Astor's as the first chairman of the Astor Library, a forerunner to the New York Public Library.

Irving continued to socialize and keep up with his emails well into his seventies, and his fame and fame soared. In a letter to Irving, Senator William C. Preston wrote, "I don't think that any man in any region has ever expressed more love for him than that given to him in America." "I think we've had just one man in the popular heart." Sunnyside had become "next to Mount Vernon," according to author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who had been "the most well-known and cherished of all the dwellings in our land" by 1859.

Irving died in his bedroom at Sunnyside on November 28, 1859, age 76, just eight months after completing the final volume of his Washington biography. Legend has it that his last words were: "I must arrange my pillows for another night."

When will this end?"

On December 1, 1859, he was discovered buried under a single headstone at Sleepy Hollow cemetery. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "In the Churchyard at Tarrytown," an 1876 poem, commemorating Irving and his grave, which concludes with: "In the Churchyard at Tarrytown."

Life in Europe

Irving spent the next two years trying to save the family business financially, but eventually had to declare bankruptcy. He continued writing in 1817 and 1818 despite no job prospects. He visited Walter Scott in the summer of 1817, establishing a lifelong personal and professional relationship.

While staying in Birmingham, England, Irving wrote the short story "Rip Van Winkle" overnight, a place that inspired other works as well. Irving's brother, William Irving, obtained a post as Chief clerk to the United States Navy in October 1818 and advised him to return home. Irving turned down the opportunity to pursue a writing career in England.

Irving sent a collection of short prose pieces to his brother Ebenezer in New York in the spring of 1819, who requested that The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon Gent be published. Gent, Irving D. The first installment, which featured "Rip Van Winkle," was a huge success, and the remainder of the project would be equally fruitful; it was published in New York in seven installments and in two volumes (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"; the second volume of the London edition).

Irving struggled against literary bootleggers, like many successful writers of this period. Any of his drawings were reprinted in periodicals without his author's permission, a legal matter in England as there was no international copyright law at the time. Irving paid for the first four American installments to be published in a single volume by John Miller in London in order to discourage further piracy in the United Kingdom.

Irving wrote to Walter Scott for assisting in the finding of a more reputable publisher for the remainder of the novel. Irving was referred to by his own publisher, London powerhouse John Murray, who agreed to take on The Sketch Book. Irving will continue to publish in the United States and Britain to protect his copyright, with Murray as his English publisher of choice.

Irving's fame soared, and he lived an active social life in Paris and Great Britain, where he was often described as an literary anomaly: an upstart American who dared to write well.

Irving and publisher John Murray were keen to follow up on The Sketch Book's success, so they spent much of 1821 in Europe in search of new information, as well as reading extensively in Dutch and German folk tales. Irving continued to write, eventually delivering a finished manuscript to Murray in March 1822, despite writer's blockage and grief over his brother William's death. The book, Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists, A Medley, was published in June 1822 (the location was based on Aston Hall, which was occupied by members of the Bracebridge family near his sister's house in Birmingham).

The style of Bracebridge was similar to that of The Sketch Book, with Irving as Crayon narrating a collection of more than 50 short stories and essays. Although some commentators expected Bracebridge to be a lesser version of The Sketch Book, readers and commenters alike applauded the book. "We have gotten so much pleasure from this book," Edinburgh scholar Francis Jeffrey wrote, "we feel tied in gratitude" to make a public acknowledgment of it." Irving was dissatisfied at the reception, which helped to solidify his name among European readers.

Irving, who was still suffering from writer's block, migrated to Germany, settling in Dresden in the winter of 1822. Here he dazzled the royal family and attached himself to Amelia Foster, an American who lives in Dresden with her five children. Irving was particularly attracted to Foster's 18-year-old daughter Emily, who fought in pain for her hand. Emily declined his marriage bid in 1823's spring.

He returned to Paris and began collaborating with playwright John Howard Payne on translations of French plays for the English stage, but with no success. He also learned about the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was romantically involved in him through Payne, though Irving never pursued the affair.

Irving published Essays of a Traveller in August 1824, including the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker"—under his Geoffrey Crayon persona. Irving told his sister, "I think there are some of the best things I have ever wrote." But although the book was selling well, critics dismissed Traveller and its author, who slammed both Traveller and the author. The public has been led to better things," the United States Literary Gazette wrote, while the New-York Mirror described Irving as "overrated." Irving retreated to Paris after being disappointed with costs and writing down proposals for proposals that never materialized. He was surprised and saddened by the book's reception.

Irving, who was in Paris, was sent by Alexander Hill Everett on January 30, 1826. Everett, the American Minister to Spain, pleaded with Irving to join him in Madrid, noting that a number of manuscripts dealing with the Spanish conquest of the Americas had just been released. Irving left for Madrid and began to search the Spanish archives for colorful finds.

Irving began working on several books at once, with complete access to the American consul's massive library of Spanish history. In January 1828, Christopher Columbus' first ancestor, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, was published. The book was both in the United States and Europe, and there would be 175 editions published before the end of the century. On the title page, it was also the first project of Irving's to be published under his own name rather than a pseudonym. Irving was encouraged to sit at the Duke of Gorman's Palace, which gave him unfettered access to many medieval manuscripts. A year later, a Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada was published, followed by Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus in 1831.

Irving's Columbus essays are a mash-up of history and fantasy, a trend that has been increasingly referred to as romantic history. Irving based their findings on extensive research in the Spanish archives, but they also included innovative techniques aimed at sharpening the story. The first of these works is the source of the persistent belief that medieval Europeans assumed the Earth was flat. Columbus was round, according to the popular book.

Irving was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1829. "I stayed here" for the time being, he said, "until I get some writings connected with the place." However, he was notified of his appointment as Secretary to the American Legation in London before he could write anything. Irving left Spain for England in July 1829, afraid that if he didn't disappoint his family and relatives if he turned down the position.

Irving McLane, who arrived in London, joined American Minister Louis McLane's staff. McLane immediately assigned the daily secretary's duties to another man and named Irving to fill the role of aide-de-camp. The two partners fought for a year over the next year to reach an agreement between the US and the British West Indies, resulting in an agreement in August 1830. Irving was given a medal by the Royal Society of Literature in the same year as well as an honorary doctorate of civil law from Oxford in 1831.

Following McLane's return to the United States in 1831 as Secretary of Treasury, Irving continued as the legation's chargé d'affaires until the arrival of Martin Van Buren, President Andrew Jackson's candidate for British Minister. Irving resigned from writing in order to write, and finally finished Tales of the Alhambra, which would be published simultaneously in the United States and England in 1832.

Irving was still in London when Van Buren learned that the US Senate had declined to confirm him as the new Minister. Irving, Consoling, predicted that the Senate's political move would go backwards. "I should not be surprised" if this vote in the Senate goes far toward elevating him to the presidential chair," Irving said.

Irving was born in New York on May 21, 1832, after 17 years in other countries. He joined Commissioner of Indian Affairs Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, along with companions Charles La Trobe and Count Albert de Pourtales, on a surveying mission, heading deep into Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma). Irving spent time in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, where he became acquainted with politician and novelist John Pendleton Kennedy.

Irving was dissatisfied with poor investments, so he turned to writing to earn additional money, beginning with A Tour on the Prairies, which related to his latest travels across the prairies. The book was another huge success, as well as the first book written and published by Irving in the United States after A History of New York in 1809. In 1834, fur magnate John Jacob Astor, who persuaded him to write a history of his fur trading dynay in Astoria, Oregon, was contacted. Irving Astor's creation was quick, shipping Astoria, the fawning biographical account. Irving, Astor, and a few others formed the Saint Nicholas Society in 1835 in the City of New York.

Irving became fascinated with his maps and tales of the territories outside the Rocky Mountains during a long stay at Astor's home. Bonneville sold his maps and rough notes to Irving for $1,000 in Washington, D.C. several months later. Irving's 1837 book The Adventures of Captain Bonneville was based on these records. These three books were part of Irving's "western" series of books, and they were published in part as a counterpoint to rumors that his time in England and Spain had made him more European than American. James Fenimore Cooper and Philip Freneau, a critic who argued against American imperialism in favour of English aristocracy, regretted it. Irving's western books, especially A Tour on the Prairies, were well-received in the United States, although British commentators accused him of "book-making."

Irving purchased a "neglected cottage" and its immediate riverfront property in Tarrytown, New York, which he named Sunnyside in 1841. It would have been difficult to maintain and improve over the next 20 years, with rising costs, so he reluctantly agreed to publish new essays and short stories under the Knickerbocker and Crayon pseudonyms. "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Because" were often approached by aspiring young writers for support or endorsement, including Edgar Allan Poe, who requested Irving's remarks on "William Wilson."

A lady of Charleston, South Carolina, urged William Clancy, the newly elected bishop of Demerara, to Demetria, in 1837, a passage in The Crayon Miscellany, and wondered if it accurately represented Catholic teaching or practice.

The passage under "Newstead Abbey" read:

Irving, who "aided the probe into the truth and promised to fix it in future editions of the misrepresentation allegations," claimed Clancy. Clancy arrived in England for his new position, bearing a note from Irving. Irving was the first to visit Newstead Abbey and discovered the paper to which Irving had alluded. On inspection, Clancy discovered that it was not an exemption granted to the friars of any ecclesiastical authority, but rather a pardon granted by the king to some groups suspected of breaching "forest rules." Clancy begged the local pastor to submit his findings to Catholic periodicals in England, and after publication, please give a copy to Irving. The answer to whether this was done is unclear because the contested text in the 1849 version is still in tactic.

Irving also defended America's evolving literature, recommending that copyright legislation be strengthened to shield writers from the sort of piracy that had previously plagued The Sketch Book. He openly supported copyright law in Congress's January 1840 issue of Knickerbocker. "We have a young literature," he said, "springing up and unfolding itself with a slew of fire and luxuriance, which, in turn, deserving all its nurturing care." The law, on the other hand, was not passed at the time.

Irving was elected as an Honorary Academician to the National Academy of Design in 1841. During Dickens' American tour in 1842, he began a friendly correspondence with Charles Dickens and hosted Dickens and his wife at Sunnyside.

After being recommended by Secretary of State Daniel Webster, President John Tyler named Irving as Minister to Spain in February 1842. "It will be a painful trial to miss myself for a time from my beloved Sunnyside, but I will return to it in a more controlled way." He hoped that his position as Prime Minister would give him plenty of time to write, but Spain was in a period of political uncertainty during the majority of his tenure, with a variety of warring factions fighting for supremacy of Queen Isabella II. Irving maintained good links with the various generals and politicians as Spain's leadership shifted through Espartero, Bravo, and Narváez. Espartero was also embroiled in a power struggle with the Spanish Cortes. Irving's official reports on the ensuing civil war and revolution expressed his ardent admiration with the regent as young Queen Isabella's knight guard. He wrote with an anti-republican, undiplomatic bent. Although Espartero, who was deposed in July 1843, was still a fallen hero in his eyes, Irving began to see Spanish affairs more realistically. However, the war and peace were exhausting, and Irving was both homeless and suffering from a crippling skin disease.

With the political climate in Spain relatively stable, Irving continued to closely track the new government's growth and the fate of Isabella. Following the Spanish parliament's discussions about the slave trade, his official duties as Spanish Minister Leo Varadkar was also involved in negotiating American trade relations with Cuba. Louis McLane, the American Minister to St. James' in London, was also called into service by him to help with resolving the Anglo-American conflict over the Oregon border, which newly elected president James K. Polk had promised to address.

Irving returned from Spain in September 1846 and took up residence in Sunnyside, where he began work on his "Author's Revised Edition" of his publisher George Palmer Putnam's "Author's Revised Version." Irving had reached an agreement that guaranteed him 12 percent of the retail price of all copies sold for its publication, which was unprecedented at the time. He continued to write regularly, reviving Oliver Goldsmith's 1849 and Islamic prophet Muhammad in 1850, as he redesigned his older works for Putnam. In 1855, he published Wolfert's Roost, a collection of stories and essays that he had written for The Knickerbocker and other journals, as well as a biography of his namesake George Washington, which he hoped to be his masterpiece. Between 1855 and 1859, five volumes of the biography were published.

Irving travelled to Mount Vernon and Washington, D.C., to do his research and developed friendships with Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce. In 1855, he was named an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was hired as an executor of John Jacob Astor's estate in 1848 and appointed by Astor's as the first chairman of the Astor Library, a forerunner to the New York Public Library.

Irving began to socialize and keep up with his emails well into his seventies, and his fame and success have continued to grow. In a letter to Irving, Senator William C. Preston wrote, "I don't think that any man in any country has ever had more adoration for him than that extended to you in America." "I think we have had just one man who is so much in the popular heart," says the author. Author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. reported that Sunnyside had become "next to Mount Vernon," the most prominent and treasured of all the dwellings in our land, by 1859.

Irving died of a heart attack in his bedroom in Sunnyside on November 28, 1859, age 76, only eight months after finishing the final volume of his Washington biography. Legend has it that his last words were: "I must arrange my pillows for another night."

When will this end?"

On December 1, 1859, he was discovered under a simple headstone in Sleepy Hollow cemetery. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1876 poem "In the Churchyard at Tarrytown" commemorates Irving and his grave, which concludes with: "In the Churchyard at Tarrytown."

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