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lads of Kilkenny” and “the nine worthies.” Irving’s brothers, William, Peter, and Ebenezer, were all members, along with Paulding, Henry Brevoort, and other young bachelors of New York’s merchant class. Their gossip and banter about literary, theatrical, social, and political issues provided the raw material for the early numbers of the pamphlet, which quickly gained notoriety from New York to Philadelphia. The success of Salmagundi may have inspired Irving’s next project. Along with his brother Peter, he began to write a parody of a well-known guidebook of New York, Samuel Mitchill’s The Picture of New York; or, The Traveller’s Guide, through the Commercial Metropolis of the United States (1809). What began as a simple spoof grew into Irving’s first significant work, his Rabelaisian epic A History of New York.

The composition of A History coincided with his courtship of Matilda Hoffman, and his literary enthusiasm grew under the influence of their love. In his notebooks, Irving recalled their courtship.

I would read to her from some favorite poet ... and dwell upon his merits when I came to some tender passage [that] seemed to catch my excited feelings. I would close the book and launch forth into his praises and when I had wrought myself up into some strain of enthusiasm I would turn to her pale dark eyes beaming upon me ... I would drink in new inspiration from them—until she suddenly seemed to recollect herself—& throw them down upon the earth with a sweet pensiveness and a full drawn sigh (quoted in Williams, vol. 2, p. 195).

When Josiah Hoffman learned of the young couple’s budding relationship, he offered Irving a partnership in his law firm to ensure that the dilettante author settled into a regular career. Tragically, though, Matilda suffered from tuberculosis, the consumptive disease Irving’s brothers had sent him to Europe to escape. As their courtship progressed her health deteriorated, and on April 26, 1809, she died, at the age of seventeen. Irving was overwhelmed.

I cannot tell you what a horrid state of mind I was in for a long time—I seemed to care for nothing—the world was a blank to me—I abandoned all thoughts of the Law—I went into the country, but could not bear solitude yet could not enjoy society—There was a dismal horror continually in my mind that made me fear to be alone—I had often to get up in the night & seek the bedroom of my brother, as if having a human being by me would relieve me of the frightful gloom of my thoughts (Williams, vol. 2, pp. 257-258).

He found solace in working on A History, spending long days in the libraries of New York and Philadelphia. The source material he gleaned from European travel narratives and early colonial histories would give his manuscript a verisimilitude that added to its popularity.

This air of realism was heightened by a promotional stunt Irving pulled off with the help of Henry Brevoort and James Kirke Paulding. In the weeks prior to publication, he published a report in the New York Evening Post that an elderly gentleman by the name of Knickerbocker had wandered off from his lodgings without paying his rent, leaving behind only a collection of papers in manuscript. In a subsequent issue, a letter to the editor reported that a gentleman matching Knickerbocker’s description had been seen in the Hudson River Valley, walking north toward Albany. A week and a half later, under the pseudonym “Seth Handaside, Landlord of the Independent Columbian Hotel,” Irving announced that the manuscript Knickerbocker left behind was to be published in order to “pay off his bill for boarding and lodging” (p. 374). This hoax was remarkably successful, so much so that for a time Irving’s narrator gained greater notoriety than the author himself. The historical accuracy of his narrative of New York’s history as the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam made his mock-heroic epic more than a Swiftean satire. It provided the newly formed nation with a basis for history that was free of associations with British colonial rule. In so doing, A History anticipates on a grand scale the