THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Irving, Washington ___ 1783-1859 ___
American ___ writer
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Irving was born in New York to
Scottish-English immigrants who were such admirers of George Washington
that they named their last son (of 11 children) after him. He studied law
privately, but did not practice for long. After travelling in Europe in
1804-1806, he also represented his family's hardware business in England
until 1818. He served as a military aide to a New York governor in 1812,
and was a magazine editor. However, he came early to writing, and it is
for his short stories, biographies and journals that he is best remembered.
His comic history of New York, by the imaginary Dietrich Knickerbocker,
was published in 1809, and 'The Sketchbook' in 1819, under the pen name,
Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The latter contained stories that were to become
famous: 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and 'Rip Van Winkle'. By the late
1820s, Irving had gained a reputation throughout Europe and the US as a
great writer and thinker. After spending much of his life in Europe, he
returned to New York in 1832, and established a home at Sunnyside in Tarrytown,
a place which many famous people visited over the years. He remained there
for the rest of his life, apart from four years (1942-1946) when he acted
as minister to Spain. Later in his life, Irving nurtured young American
authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edgar
Allen Poe.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1803-1842 ___ literary political
people society travel Germany UK Spain Italy Switzerland
WEB TEXT LINKS
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
___ possibly
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Journals of Washington Irving
Mr. Irving's Notes and Journals of Travel in Europe, 1804-1805
The Western Journals of Washington Irving
October 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |