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...
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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...
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Considered the first professional man of letters in the United States, Washington Irving (1783-1859) was influential in the development of the short story form and helped to gain international respect...
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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...
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Washington 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 stylist. As a wr...
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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...
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Washington Irving , America's first professional man of letters, devoted the latter half of his productive career primarily to historical writing. Though best remembered in the twentieth century as an...
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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...
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The first American writer to be acclaimed as a literary figure of stature on both sides of the Atlantic, Washington Irving is today regarded as an important but obscure figure of American letters. D...
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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...
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Washington Irving, America's first successful professional man of letters, was an essayist, humorist, historian, literary critic, antiquarian scholar, magazine journalist, and short-story writer. In a...
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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...
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"I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play the fiddle & frenchhorn," Washington Irving said in an 1819 letter. While his flute music for a time wa...
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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...
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In the following essay, Lambert explains the nature of the essays in Salmagundi and the particular qualities of American culture.
So little is really known of the United States of America, on this sid...
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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...
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In the following essay, Sondey demonstrates how Irving's use of nostalgia in Salmagundi and The Sketch Book promoted his views on conservatism and the national identity.
Washington Irving (1783...
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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...
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In the following review, Everett compares A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus to Irving's earlier works, describing his skill as a writer of humor, satire, and history.
Th...
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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 lite...
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In the following essay, Banks analyzes Irving's conflict between individual freedom and social responsibility as evidenced in his writings about women and his life.
The theme of growing up and ...
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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 Irving ...
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In the following essay, Murray discusses early American views on identity and nationality through an analysis of the works of Irving and William Apess.
We see that recognition of your alienation leads...
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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,” con...
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