30/08/2026
We do read him in our 19th century American literature class ;) -- Btw, he also came up with the nickname "Gotham" for NYC, sounds familiar? :)🦇
Washington Irving was the first acknowledged master of American letters. He pioneered forms such as the American essay, short story, and travelogue, as well as emergent genres like horror and the Western. His two masterpiece stories, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” were instant classics, told and retold until they were whittled down to folk tales, a genre that Irving worshipped. He coined the term “the almighty dollar,” helped establish the traditions of American Christmas (including the notion of St. Nicholas riding in a flying wagon), and popularized Gotham as New York City’s nickname. He also bestowed on his beloved home town its first mascot, a fictional, crotchety old man named Diedrich Knickerbocker, whose legacy extends through this June’s N.B.A. championship.
Today barely anyone reads him. But the professor and essayist Phillip Lopate, who read thousands of pages of Irving’s work, found in him “the prototype of a writer’s life, with all its setbacks and triumphs.” Eric Lach reviews Lopate’s book about the forgotten literary figure: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/OzaAgN
