the legend of hollow story by washington irving

He was now a figurehead of American literature and dispensed advice to Edgar Allan Poe amongst others. Historical works flowed from his pen further enhancing his reputation and fortune.įollowing the completion of ‘Tales of the Alhambra’ in 1832, Irving returned to America after 17 years abroad. Irving reveled in both the size of the libraries he was granted access to and their rich quality. In 1826, the American Minister to Spain, invited him to Madrid where he could examine the many historical documents that he had access to.

In August 1824, he published ‘Tales of a Traveller’, which included the famed ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’. From now on Irving published concurrently in America and England in order to render piracy obsolete. The sixth part contained ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.īeset by literary piracy, with no copyright law at the time, he set about publishing legitimate copies in England to outwit the bootleggers. The first part included ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and was extremely successful. He sent some short stories back to New York to be published as ‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent’. This left him in England with no real employment prospects, and so he returned to writing. After two years he could see no way out but bankruptcy.

Unfortunately his family’s established trading company was now facing great upheavals and Irving was dispatched to England to try to sort it out. It satirised local history, local historians and politics. In 1809 while mourning the death of his teenage fiancée Irving finished his first significant book, ‘A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynsasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker’. Moderately successful, the magazine spread Irving’s reputation beyond New York. Irving nicknamed the city ‘Gotham City’, a name still in use today. In 1806, back in New York to study law, he scraped a pass at the bar and then founded with several others the literary magazine Salmagundi. Bizarrely he ignored most of the great sights on offer to concentrate on developing his social and conversational powers. When his health began to fail, he was sent on the Grand Tour of Europe. An outbreak of yellow fever at 15 moved him away from Manhattan and into the surrounding countryside providing valuable settings for later works such as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.īy 19 Irving was writing regularly to the New York Morning Chronicle, commenting on the theatrical and social scenes.

Irving found his real interests away from school in literature and the theatre. Washington Irving was born on 3rd April, 1783, the youngest of 11, in New York.

The legend of hollow story by washington irving