As hard as it may be to believe, there was a point in time when other countries looked down upon America. We were considered less cultured than places such as our original birthplace of Europe. This was due partly to the fact that there wasn’t a whole lot of literature coming out of the U.S. at the time. However, this all changed with the rise of a man by the name of Washington Irving. Irving was the first American author to achieve widespread attention and praise overseas. Known for both fiction and nonfiction, Irving also inspired and encouraged many other aspiring authors, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Born to Scottish-English immigrants in New York on April 3rd, 1783, Washington had ten brothers and sisters, but only seven that survived into adulthood. Born the same week the American Revolution ended, he
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His first major book, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, was coupled with a hoax of missing person adverts for his character/pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian. Unsuspecting readers became enthralled with the character before the book even came out, and when it did in December of 1809, it was met with critical and popular success. Ten years later, in the Spring of 1819, Washington sent his brother a collection of short stories, asking him to help him publish it as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. The first installment, including the famous tale of Rip Van Winkle, the sixth and final installment, featuring the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and all parts in between were major hits. It was also published in Europe, where it was enormously successful. Later on in his life, he would begin to publish more nonfiction works, including biographies of figures such as Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and his famous namesake, George Washington, which spanned five volumes