George Haven Putnam

“ The Tales of a Traveller, the scenes of which were laid partly in Italy, show the versaility of the author in bringing his imagination into harmony with varied surroundings. Whether the subject be in England, in France, or in Italy, whether he is writing of the Alhambra or of the Hudson, Irving always succeeds in coming into the closet sympathy with his environment. He has the artist’s touch in the ability to reproduce the atmosphere in which the scenes of his stories are placed. ”

“ To be told now by publishers of experience that The Sketch Book, Knickerbocker, Columbus, and the other books, notwithstanding their original prestige, had had their day and were not wanted by the new generation, was a serious shock to Irving not only on the ground of the blow to his confidence in himself as an author, but because his savings were inconsiderable, and he needed the continued income that he had hoped to secure from his pen. ”

“ Irving possessed one qualification which is lacking in the make-up of not a few conscientious and able historians. His strain of romance and his power of imagination enabled him to picture to himself and to make vivid the scenes described, and the nature, the purpose, and the manner of thought of each character introduced. The reader is brought into personal association with the force and dignity of the great leader ”

“ As soon as the sales of the new Putnam edition of the earlier works and of the later volumes that he had been able to add to these freed him from financial care, he began the collection of material for the great history. He had already travelled over much of the country with which the career of his hero was connected. He knew by the observations of an inteligent traveller the regions of New England, New Jersey, Western Pennsylvania, and Virginia, while with the territory of New York he had from his youth been familiar. ”

“ If Irving’s descriptions of rural England were to give fresh interest to American readers in the old home of their forefathers, the skill with which he had utilized the traditional legends of the Catskill Mountains and had woven fanciful stories along the roadway of Sleepy Hollow made clear to readers on the other side of the Atlantic that imagination and literary style were not restricted to Europe. ”

“ The biographies consitute good narrative and give futher examples of the author’s exceptional power of characterization. If they fail to reach the high standard of the Columbus, it is doubtless because Irving possessed no such close familiarity with the environment of his subjects. In Spain he had made long sojourns and had become imbued with the atmosphere of the Spanish legends and ideals. He knew his Italy, in like manner, from personal observation and from sympathetic relations with the peasants no less than the scholards, but Arabia was to him a distant land. ”

“ It was evident from the words and from the faces of those that had come together that the man whose life was closed had not only made for himself a place in the literature of the world, but had been accepted as a personal friend by the neighbours of his home. ”

“ Journeying in Europe during those years of war and of national upheaval was a dangerous matter. Irving was stopped more than once, and on one occasion was arrested at some place in France on the charge of being an English spy. He seems to have borne the troublesome interruptions with a full measure of equanimity, and he used each dealy to good purpose as an opportunity for a more leisurely study of the environment and of the persons with whom he came into touch. He returned to New York early in 1806, shortly after Europe had been shaken by the battle of Austerlitz. ”

“ An American critic who might have been tempted to criticize some of the papers in The Sketch Book as unduly English in their sympathies and as indicating a surrender by the author of his American principles, was estopped from any such folly by the fact that the same volume contained those immortal legends of the Hudson, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. ”

“ In this biography, Irving gave ample evidence of his power of reconstituting the figures of the past. He impresses upon the reader the personality of the great discoverer, the idealist, the man who was so absorbed in his own belief that he was able to impress this upon the skeptics about him. We have before us a vivid picture of the Spanish Court from which, after patient effort, Columbus secured the grudging support for his expedition, and we come to know each member of the little crew through whose service the great task was brought to accomplishment. ”

“ The “fool of a publisher” was the late George P. Putnam, who had recently returned from London where he had for eight years been engaged in the attempt to induce the English public to buy American books. Mr. Putnam now proposed to issue a uniform revised edition of all of Irving’s writings, with which should be associted the books that he might later bring to completion, and to pay to the author a royalty on each copy sold, guaranteeing against such royalty for a term of three years a sum increasing with each year. ”

“ It is not necesary, however, because Irving was keenly sympathetic with Addison’s mode of thought, to speak of Irving’s hero as an imitation. England has produced more than one squire, and Bracebridge and the family of the Hall were the creations of the American observer. The English home of the early nineteenth century is presented in a picture that is none the less artistic because it can be accepted as trustworthy and exact. In this volume we have also a characteristic American study, Dolph Heyliger, a fresh romance of Irving’s beloved Hudson River. ”

“ Beyond on the roadside could be seen the grey walls of the mill, in front of which Ichabod Crane had clattered past, pursued by the headless horseman. The roadside and the neighbouring fields were crowded with vehicles, large and small, which had gathered from all parts of the countryside. ”

“ It was in part because men honoured in Great Britain, writers like Scott, Southey, Rogers, Roscoe, Moore, men of affairs like Richard Bentley, John Murray, and many others, came not only to respect, but to have affectionate regard for, the American author, and it was in part because the books written by this man showed such sympathetic appreciation of things and of men English, that England was brought to a better understanding of the possibilities of America. ”

“ He was himself a clear-headed and devoted patriot, but he was able to free himself from the local feeling of antagonism towards the ancient enemy Great Britain, and from the prejudice against other nations, always based upon ignorace, that is so often confused with patriotism. ”

“ During Irving’s brief professional association with Hoffman, he was accepted as an intimate in the Hoffman family circle, and it was Hoffman’s daughter Matilda who was the herione in the only romance of the author’s life. He became engaged to Matilda when he was barely of age, but the betrothal lasted only a few months, as she died suddenly at the age of seventeen. ”

“ In 1849, the London publisher Bohn began to print unauthorized editions of the various books of Irving. A series of litigations ensued, as a result of which the authorized publishers, Murray and Bentley, discouraged with a long fight and with the great expense incurred in securing protection under the existing copyright regulations, accepted the offer of the priate for the use, at a purely norminal price, of their publishing rights, and Irving’s works came thus to be included in Bohn’s Library Series. ”

“ Before the manuscript was disposed of, Seth Handaside, the landlord, inserted in New York and Philadelphia papers an advertisement decribing Mr. Knickerbocker and asking for information about him. When acknowledgment of the authorship of the book was finally made by Irving, it was difficult for his fellow New Yorkers to believe that this unsuccessful young lawyer and attractive “man about town” could have produced a work giving evidence of such maturity and literary power. ”

“ Oliver Goldsmith: a Biography. 1849. (2 eds.) [a new life, not the sketch published with Goldsmith's writings] . London, 1849, 1850 (5 eds.) . Leipzig, 1850. New York, 1864 [1873?] ; another ed., with selections from Goldsmith, 2 vols., before 1876. London, [1879?] . New York, 1904. German, Berlin, 1858.
A Book of the Hudson. Collected from the Various Works of Diedrich Knickerbocker. Edited by Geoffrey Crayon. 1849.
The Crayon Reading Book &hellip selections from the various writings of Washington Irving. ”

“ Vol. 2, 1813, (3) Biography of Captain James Lawrence, (4) Biographical Notice of the Late Lieutenant Burrows, (5) Biographical Memoir of Commodore Perry. Vol. 3, 1814, (6) Traits of Indian Character, (7) Review of Odes (etc.) by Edwin C. Holland, (8) Philip of Pokanoket. Vol. 4, 1814, (9) Biographical Memoir of Captain David Porter. Vol. 5, 1815, (10) Biographical Sketch of Thomas Campbell. (11) Review of the Conquest of Granada. ”