Writer.
Perhaps best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
and "Rip Van Winkle," Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783 in New
York City, New York, USA. He was one of eleven children born to
Scottish-English immigrant parents, William Irving, Sr. and Sarah. He
was named Washington after the hero of the American revolution (which
had just ended), George Washington, and attended the first presidential
inauguration of his namesake in 1789.
Washington Irving was
educated privately, studied law, and began to write essays for
periodicals. He travelled in France and Italy (1804–6), wrote whimsical
journals and letters, then returned to New York City to practice law --
though by his own admission, he was not a good student, and in 1806, he
barely passed the bar. He and his brother William Irving and James Kirke
Paulding wrote the Salamagundi papers (1807–8), a collection of humorous essays. He first became more widely known for his comic work, A History of New York (1809), written under the name of "Diedrich Knickerbocker."
In
1815 Irving went to England to work for his brothers' business, and
when that failed he composed a collection of stories and essays that
became The Sketch Book, published under the name "Geoffrey
Crayon" (1819–20), which included ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow’. In 1822 he went to the Continent, living in Germany and
France for several years, and was then in Spain (1826) and became
attache at the US embassy in Madrid. While in Spain he researched for
his biography of Christopher Columbus (1828) and his works on Granada
(1829) and the Alhambra (1832).
He was secretary of the US
legation in London (1829–32), and later returned to Spain as the US
ambassador (1842–6), but he spent most of the rest of his life at his
estate, ‘Sunnyside’, near Tarrytown, NY, turning out a succession of
mainly historical and biographical works, including a five-volume life
of George Washington. Although he became a best-selling author, he never
really fully developed as a literary talent, he has retained his
reputation as the first American man of letters. Irving also advocated
for writing as a legitimate career, and argued for stronger laws to
protect writers from copyright infringement.
In 1999, director Tim Burton released his film Sleepy Hollow
based on Washington Irving's story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The
film starred Johnny Depp as police constable Ichabod Crane, who is sent
from New York City to investigate a series of murders by a mysterious
Headless Horseman
