Washington Irving

Washington Irving was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian and diplomat of the early nineteenth century. Born in New York City in 1783, Washington Irving shared his birth year with the same year that the United States of America won its independence from Britain. During this period, New York covered just the lower tip of Manhattan. The youngest of seven children, he was named after George Washington, the first president of the United States. From his boyhood, he developed a keen interest in strange stories of the supernatural that included spirits and phantoms. He also put on plays at home in the company of his brothers and sisters. Washington Irving spent a lot of time with his relatives in Tarrytown, twenty miles north of New York City. He first heard ghost stories from the old Dutch families residing in the area, and also fell in love with the adjoining Hudson Valley and the nearby Catskill Mountains. After he began writing, Irving used several pen names like “Diedrich Knickerbocker” who was the supposed narrator of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”. In addition to these famous stories, Irving also authored a comic history of New York, and a biography of George Washington. He will be remembered and celebrated as the first popular and widely read author from the new United States as, before him, American readers had always turned to European literature for their reading pleasure.