Washington Irving

Washington Irving
Daguerreotype of Washington Irving (modern copy by Mathew Brady, original by John Plumbe)
Born	(1783-04-03)April 3, 1783 New York City, U.S.
Died	November 28, 1859(1859-11-28) (aged 76) Sunnyside, Tarrytown, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, New York
Pen name	Geoffrey Crayon, Diedrich Knickerbocker, Jonathan Oldstyle
Occupation	Short story writer essayist biographer historian diplomat
Language	English
Literary movement	Romanticism
Relatives	William Irving (brother) Peter Irving (brother)
Signature
United States Minister to Spain
In office 1842–1846
President	John Tyler James K. Polk
Preceded by	Aaron Vail
Succeeded by	Romulus Mitchell Saunders

Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He wrote the short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain that deal with subjects such as the Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors. Irving served as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s.

Irving was born and raised in Manhattan to a merchant family. He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. He temporarily moved to England for the family business in 1815, where he achieved fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. which was serialized from 1819 to 1820. He continued to publish regularly throughout his life, and he completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death at age 76 in Tarrytown, New York.

Irving was one of the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and he encouraged other American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe. He was also admired by some British writers, including Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Francis Jeffrey, and Walter Scott. He advocated for writing as a legitimate profession and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement.