Line #8 Creator/WashingtonIrving

Context Creator / WashingtonIrving

Go To


1	[[quoteright:316:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/portrait_of_washington_irving_by_john_wesley_jarvis_in_1809.jpg]]
2	Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American writer of the early 19th century. He is best known for the short stories "Literature/RipVanWinkle" and "Literature/TheLegendOfSleepyHollow", and is popularly considered the first person to make a living primarily as a writer, when the authors before his time tended to just do it as a side job.
3
4	Irving had his first notable success with ''A History of New York'', an 1809 satirical work that he wrote under the PenName of Diedrich Knickerbocker, a fictional Dutch-American historian. That persona was also used for ''The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.'', which purports to be a collection of tales that Geoffrey Crayon (another pseudonym) compiled from the notes of Diedrich Knickerbocker. "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" were both originally published as part of the ''Sketch Book'' collection.
5
6	However, Irving's influence extends beyond those two famous stories. He was the one who coined the nickname "Gotham" for New York City. The aforementioned ''History of New York'' set the ball rolling for our modern conception of SantaClaus, which would later be codified in "Literature/TwasTheNightBeforeChristmas" by Clement Clarke Moore. And perhaps more infamously, Irving's 1828 biography ''A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus'' is generally blamed for inventing the myth that UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus sailed west to prove the Earth was round.
7
8	Irving's last work was a five-volume biography of his namesake, UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, which he intended to be his MagnumOpus. As you may have noticed, [[MagnumOpusDissonance it didn't happen that way]]. Irving is buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the very cemetery supposedly haunted by his HeadlessHorseman character.
9
10	!!Works by Washington Irving with their own trope page include:
11
12	* ''The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.''
13	** "Literature/TheLegendOfSleepyHollow"
14	** "Literature/RipVanWinkle"
15	** "Literature/{{The Spectre Bridegroom\|1819}}"
16	* ''Tales of a Traveller by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.''

Context Creator / WashingtonIrving