《美国文学经典研读》：
4.Washington Irving （1783-1859）
Washington Irving was born in New York City （near present-day Wall Street） at the end of the Revolutionary War. His parents, Scottish-English immigrants, were great admirers of General George Washington, and named their son after their hero.
Early in his life Irving developed a passion for books. He studied law but practiced only briefly. From 1804 to 1806 he traveled widely in Europe. After return to the United States, Irving was admitted to New York Bar. He was a partner with his brothers in the family hardware business in New York and England until it collapsed in 1818. During the war of 1812 Irving was a military aide to New York Govemor Tomplans in the U.S. Army.
Irving's career as a writer started in journals and newspapers. He contributed to Morning Chronicle （1802-1803） , which was edited by his brother Peter, and published Salmagundi （1807-1808） , writing in collaboration with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding. From 1812 to 1814 he was an editor of Analetic magazine in Philadelphia and New York. Irving's success in social life and literature was shadowed by a personal tragedy. He was engaged to be married to Matilda Hoffmanm who died at the age of seventeen in 1809. Irving never married nor had children.
In 1809 appeared Irving's comic history of the Dutch regime in New York, A History of New York, by the imaginary" Dietrich Knickerbocker" , who was supposed to be an eccentric Dutch-American scholar. It was one of the earliest fantasies of history. The name Knickerbocker was later used to identify the first American school of writers, the Knickerbocker Group, of which Irving was a leading figure. The book became part of New York folklore, and eventually the word Knickerbocker was also used to describe any New Yorker who could trace one's family to the original Dutch settlers.
Irving's success continued with The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. （1819-1820） , a collection of stories, in which Irving's best-known story "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" were included. The fictional Sleepy Hollow is actually the lower Hudson Valley area near Tarrytown, New York, and Rip Van Winkle slept through the entire Revolutionary War in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. The stories were heavily influenced by the German folktales. In 1822 appeared a sequel of The Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall. By the late 1820s, Irving had gained a reputation throughout Europe and America as a great writer and thinker.
Irving stayed in Europe for seventeen years. In 1832 Irving returned to New York to an enthusiastic welcome as the first American author to have achieved international fame. He toured the southern and western United States and wrote The Cayon Miscenllany （1835） and A Tour of the Praitries （1835） . From 1836 to 1842 Irving lived at Sunnyside manor house near Tarrytown along the Hudson River.
Between the years of 1842 - 1845 Irving was the U.S. Ambassador to Spain. Irving spent the last years of his life in Tarrytown. From 1848 to 1859 he was President of Astor Library, later New York Public Library. Irving's later publications include Mahomet and H/s Successors （1850） , Wolfert's Roost （1855） , and his five-volume The Life of George Washington. Irving died in Tarrytown on November 28, 1859.
In the history of American literature Irving is remembered particularly for his literary innovations. The Sketch Book consisted of the first modem short stories in American literature. It was him who introduced the familiar essay from Europe to America. He ranked among the first of the modem men of letters to write history and biography as literary entertainment. As an essayist Irving was not interested in the meaning of nature like Emerson or self-inspection like Montaigne. He observed the vanishing pasts of old Europe, the riverside Creole villages of Louisiana, the old Pawnee hunting grounds of Oklahoma, and how ladies fashion moving from one extreme to the other. A study of Irving's works would lead to the conclusion that humor was at the root of almost everything that was significant in them. What was more impressive was that his humor was always well-meaning, mild, and prone to be accepted.
The style of Irving's work is characterized by simplicity, lucidity, and poise with easy flow. His stories, essays, histories, and biographies win him the acclaim as the first American stylist of American Romanticism. His colorful legends of the Hudson River valley helped awaken Americans to an appreciation of their nation and its native literature. Many characters he created are so vivid and true that they tend to linger in the mind of the readers forever.
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