1783-1859 · American author and diplomat, author of The Sketch Book
About Washington Irving
Washington Irving (1783-1859), born in New York City, first won fame with the comic Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809). He went to England in 1815 on the business of his family's trading firm, and after its failure in 1818 turned to writing for a living; The Sketch Book made him the first American author widely read and admired in Britain. He later wrote on Spain and on Columbus, served as United States minister to Spain (1842-1846), and finished a life of George Washington at his home, Sunnyside, near Tarrytown.
“He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.”
The Sketch Book is a miscellany of essays, travel sketches and tales presented as the notebook of Geoffrey Crayon, a genial American bachelor who crosses the Atlantic to look at the England he has known from books. Crayon opens by explaining that he wanders to see the shifting scenes of life, then describes the voyage itself, a visit to the Liverpool historian William Roscoe, and a portrait of a wife who sustains her ruined husband.