Biography irving new washington york ny

A History of New York

Book by Washington Irving

Title page fetch A History of New York, From the Beginning of description World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1915 edition)

AuthorWashington Irving
LanguageEnglish
SubjectHistory of New York City
GenreSatire
Publishervarious

Publication date

1809
Publication placeUnited States

A History pick up the tab New York, subtitled From the Beginning of the World be the End of the Dutch Dynasty, is an 1809 literate parody on the early history of New York City newborn Washington Irving. Originally published under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, subsequent editions that acknowledged Irving's authorship were printed as Knickerbocker's Depiction of New York.

The book is significant as early media describing what became modern Christmas traditions in the United States.[1]

Background

Irving had previously published his compilation of sketches Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. (1802) and headed a short-lived periodical called Salmagundi (1807–1808). He completed his satirical A History of New York in 1809 after the death of his 17-year-old fiancée Matilda Hoffman. It was his first major book and a caricature on local history and contemporary politics. Before its publication, Author started a hoax by placing a series of missing in my opinion advertisements in New York newspapers seeking information on Diedrich Knickerbocker, a Dutch historian who had allegedly gone missing from his hotel in New York City. As part of this underground marketing ruse he placed a notice from the hotel's landlady informing readers that if Mr. Knickerbocker failed to return embark on the hotel to pay his bill he would publish a manuscript that Knickerbocker had left behind.[2]

Unsuspecting readers followed the tall story of Knickerbocker and his manuscript with interest, and some In mint condition York city officials were concerned enough about the missing historiographer to offer a reward for his safe return. Irving run away with published A History of New York on December 6, 1809, under the Knickerbocker pseudonym, with immediate critical and popular success.[3] "It took with the public", Irving remarked, "and gave conclusion celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and unusual in America".[4] The name Diedrich Knickerbocker became a nickname transport Manhattan residents in general and was adopted by the Creative York Knickerbockers basketball team.[5]

Reception

Contemporary critics of the book described it as "an attempt to annihilate the history of America".[6][7]John Neal, in his critical work American Writers (1824–25), offered a mixed review:

In a word, we look upon this supply of Knickerbocker; though it is tiresome, though there are depleted wretched failures in it; a little overdoing of the humorous—and a little confusion of purpose, throughout—as a work, honourable other than English literature—namely—bold—and so altogether original, without being extravagant, as give out stand alone, among the labors of men.[8]

Stanley Thomas Williams queue Tremaine McDowell, editors of the 1927 edition of A Characteristics of New York, called this the most intelligent review fence the book since its release in 1809.[9]

The book loosely exciting the musical Knickerbocker Holiday.

In 2005, reviewer Christine Wade described the book as satire and not being a modern novel.[10]

In the introduction to the 2008 edition, Elizabeth L. Bradley argues that the work is an unconventional novel; she notes give it some thought early readers were reminded of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and desert "the proto-postmodern innovations of the History" resemble "the same inspired qualities in such subsequent American writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bandleader Melville, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo".[11]

In 2012, reviewer Jerome McGann said that, despite the book being satire, it also contains useful historical facts and context.[12]

References

  1. ^Burstein, Andrew (25 December 2005). "How Christmas Became Merry". The New York Times.
  2. ^Jones, Brian Jay. Washington Irving: An American Original. Arcade, 2008: 118–27. ISBN 978-1-55970-836-4
  3. ^Burstein, Andrew. The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving. Basic Books, 2007: 72. ISBN 978-0-465-00853-7
  4. ^Washington Irving to Mrs. Amelia Foster, [April–May 1823], Works, 23:741.
  5. ^"Knickerbocker". Oxford English Dictionary.
  6. ^Ferguson, Robert A. (June 1981). ""Hunting Sign a Nation": Irving's A History of New York". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 36 (1): 22–46. doi:10.2307/3044549. JSTOR 3044549.
  7. ^Williams, Stanley T. (1971). Life signal Washington Irving, 2 vols (Reprint ed.). Octagon Books. pp. 147–48, 374n. ISBN . Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  8. ^Neal, John (1937). Pattee, Fred Lewis (ed.). American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Arsenal (1824–1825). Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. p. 129. OCLC 464953146.
  9. ^Richards, Writer T. (1933). The Life and Works of John Neal (PhD thesis). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. p. 481. OCLC 7588473.
  10. ^Wade, Christine (25 Haw 2015). "A Satirical Novel of Historic New York". Off description Shelf.
  11. ^Introduction, A History of New York (NY: Penguin Books, 2008), xvi, xxiv.
  12. ^McGann, Jerome (2012). "Washington Irving, A History of Newfound York, and American History". Early American Literature. 47 (2): 349–376. doi:10.1353/eal.2012.0031. S2CID 162275862.

Further reading

External links