The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Wr - Washington Irving [245]
2 (p. 373) Notices: In the weeks prior to the publication of A History of New York, Irving published these notices as a promotional hoax to increase sales (see the Introduction, p. xxiii). His ploy was successful, and a second edition of A History was printed in 1812.
Inspired by Washington Irving
Let us not, then, lament over the decay and oblivion into which ancient writers descend; they do but submit to the great law of nature, which declares that all sublunary shapes of matter shall be limited in their duration, but which decrees, also, that their elements shall never perish. Generation after generation, both in animal and vegetable life, passes away, but the vital principle is transmitted to posterity, and the species continue to flourish. Thus, also, do authors beget authors, and having produced a numerous progeny, in a good old age they sleep with their fathers, that is to say, with the authors who preceded them-and from whom they had stolen.
—Washington Irving, from “The Art of Book-Making”
Literature
America’s first man of letters inspired a host of American authors who alternately revered, questioned, lambasted, and imitated him. The first generation of great American writers—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, among others—all explicitly acknowledged Irving’s influence. Some of them even published their works in Knickerbocker Magazine, one of the many invocations of Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving’s narrator in A History of New York (1809). The term “Knickerbocker” eventually came to refer to the descendants of the Dutch of New York and finally to identify all New Yorkers; it is now found in dictionaries.
Poe’s tales of horror—some of them blackly comic and dealing with the supernatural—are often cited as the first American works that distinctly show Irving’s influence. Primarily a poet and writer of short stories, Poe struggled through most of his writing life for favorable attention. Looking to establish a reputation for himself in the American press, he courted Irving, and Irving, in his way, mentored the younger author. When he began to receive letters from Irving, the famously insecure Poe was jubilant. “I am sure you will be pleased to hear that Washington Irving has addressed me 2 letters, abounding in high passages of compliment in regard to my Tales—passages which he desires me to make public,” Poe wrote in a November 11, 1839, letter to his old friend Joseph Evans Snodgrass. “Irving’s name will afford me a complete triumph over those little critics who would endeavor to put me down by raising the hue & cry of exaggeration in style, of Germanism & such twaddle.” Poe built on the foundation of American folklore and mystery found in Irving’s works, adding to it his own lyricism and quiet beauty. Despite this, Poe never enjoyed literary success during his lifetime to rival Irving’s.
Another writer to whom Irving played mentor is Twice- Told Tales author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne is said to have modeled “The Custom-House,” a chapter that precedes the action in The Scarlet Letter (1850), after Irving’s work. Following publication of that novel, Hawthorne’s celebrity soared, and Irving became of one of the many admirers of Hawthorne’s genius. Their mutual affection established, Hawthorne sent the following letter to Irving on July 16, 1852, along with a copy of his newest effort, The Blithedale Romance (1852):
I beg you to believe me, my dear Sir, that your friendly and approving word was one of the highest gratifications that I could possibly have received, from any literary source. Ever since I began to write, I have kept it among my cherished hopes to obtain such a word;