Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783, in New York
City. He is actually named after George Washington and attended the first
presidential inauguration of his namesake in 1789. Unlike most writers of his
era, he did not attend college. He was educated privately and studied law. By his
own account, he was not a good student and barely passed the bar to be a
lawyer. He experienced his first brush with writing when he and his brother
wrote the Salamagundi papers, which
was a collection of humorous essays. Early on, he commonly wrote under the
surname, Diedrich Knickerbocker.
He
traveled to England in 1815 to help run his brother’s business, but that
eventually went south. He then wrote a collection of short stories called The Sketch Book, which were published
under the name “Geoffrey Crayon” and included his most popular writings, “Rip
Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
While in England, he became secretary of the U.S. legation in London
from 1829-1832. He also became a U.S. ambassador in Spain, but he spent most of
his time in his estate, “Sunnyside”, near
Tarrytown, New York. While there, he composed a five-volume biography of George
Washington.
His stories
have become some of the most popular children’s stories of all time. In 1999,
director Tim Burton transformed “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” into a film that
starred Johnny Depp. It was titled simply, Sleepy
Hollow. The story is about a police officer, Ichabod Crane, who is from New
York and has been called to investigate a series of gruesome murders committed
by the “Headless Horseman.” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” has also been
converted into a children’s cartoon numerous times, as well as “Rip Van Winkle.”
Below
is a link to the trailer from the movie Sleepy
Hollow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6O4Himch7g&noredirect=1
Bradley Raulston
