Washington Irving Summary

Washington Irving - (1783 - 1859) (Also wrote under the pseudonyms Fray Antonio Agapida, Geoffrey Crayon, Diedrich Knickerbocker, Launcelot Langstaff, and Jonathan Oldstyle) American short story write... Read more

Biography EssayWashington Irving was America's first successful professional man of letters, a gifted teller of tales, especially as a native humorist, a romantic historian, and an influential prose s... Read more

Considered the first professional man of letters in the United States, Washington Irving was influential in the development of the short story form and helped to gain international respect for fledgli... Read more

At the outset of Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall (1822) Geoffrey Crayon, the author's quasi-autobiographical persona, makes the following observation: "I have always had an opinion that much good... Read more

Washington Irving was so important a figure, so self-conscious a writer, and so given to romantic irony and satirizing authorship that the meagerness of his literary criticism and scholarship is disa... Read more

Washington Irving told an anecdote of his youth which shows both his propensity to delight in stories as well as his skepticism concerning them. A "lively boy, full of curiosity, of easy faith, and p... Read more

Washington Irving, America's first professional man of letters, won his international reputation in the 1820s as a literary cosmopolitan, an interpreter especially of English and Spanish character, cu... Read more

In the following excerpt, Current-Garcia focuses on the tales and sketches of Washington Irving, suggesting that while Irving “did not actually invent the short story, he set the pattern for th... Read more

In the following essay, Pryse explores the advent of regionalism by comparing Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Lot” to Irving's “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” an... Read more

In the following essay, Catalano compares “Rip Van Winkle” to Hemingway's “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” arguing that both protagonists share a transfor... Read more

In the following essay, the critic praises Irving as a writer of the highest quality, forever to be remembered and revered. The name of Washington Irving will be for ever associated with American l... Read more

In the following essay, Harding probes Irving's complex relationship with Western expansion as evident in A Tour on the Prairies, Astoria, and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. When Irvi... Read more

In the following essay, Hiller traces the events which influenced The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Grayon, Gent., arguing that with this work, Irving lost his distinctive voice. “I have,” ... Read more