50 Fun Facts About Washington Irving

Which nickname did Washington Irving give New York City in an 1807 issue of his satirical magazine?

Gotham, an Anglo-Saxon name meaning Goat's Town, came from an English village whose people were proverbially foolish. The joke outlived the magazine by two centuries.

Which New York sports team is named after a fictional Dutch historian invented by Washington Irving in 1809?

The Knicks are short for Knickerbockers, after Diedrich Knickerbocker, the crusty narrator of Irving's comic A History of New York. His surname became a byword for New Yorkers.

Which lanky schoolmaster is chased by the Headless Horseman in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?

Ichabod Crane is never seen in the valley again after the midnight chase. The tale hints that a rival for a rich farmer's daughter, not a ghost, was the rider.

In Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, how long does Rip sleep after drinking with strangers in the mountains?

Twenty years slip by in what feels to Rip like a single night. He walks home with a foot-long grey beard to a village where nobody knows his face.

Which false belief about medieval Europeans was spread by Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Christopher Columbus?

They thought Earth was flat only in Irving's largely fictional scene of scholars doubting Columbus. The real dispute in the 1490s was over the planet's size.

Which English novelist was romantically interested in Washington Irving, as he learned from a playwright friend?

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, had her interest relayed to Irving by the playwright John Howard Payne. Irving never followed it up.

Which phrase about money is Washington Irving credited with coining in his tale The Creole Village?

The almighty dollar was Irving's mocking name for the object of universal devotion he saw across America, with banks as its pious shrines.

Which director turned Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow into a 1999 horror film led by Johnny Depp?

Tim Burton recast the timid schoolmaster as a city police constable sent upstate to investigate a string of beheadings. The film won the Oscar for Best Art Direction.

In 1940, Washington Irving's portrait opened a series honouring American authors on which everyday item?

A postage stamp worth one cent carried Irving's face, the first in a set of writers that went on to include Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott.

Which conflict does Rip Van Winkle sleep through in Washington Irving's famous tale?

The American Revolution comes and goes while Rip sleeps. Asked how he voted, he alarms the crowd by declaring himself a loyal subject of King George III.

Which English novelist credited Washington Irving's sketches of a manor-house Christmas as an influence on his own?

Charles Dickens named Irving as an influence on his Christmas writings, A Christmas Carol among them. The two struck up a friendly correspondence before he toured America in 1842.

Which English poet said he knew Washington Irving's The Sketch Book by heart and wept over one of its tales?

Lord Byron claimed the sentimental sketch The Broken Heart had made him weep. The collection was among the first American books to be widely read in Britain and Europe.

Which Scottish novelist did Washington Irving visit in 1817, beginning a friendship that won him a top London publisher?

Walter Scott talked his own publisher, John Murray, into taking on The Sketch Book. In gratitude, Irving dedicated the English editions to him.

Which American writer called Washington Irving much overrated in 1838, yet sought his comments on his own Gothic tales?

Edgar Allan Poe granted Irving a pioneer's credit but thought the writing itself overpraised. He still asked for Irving's opinion of The Fall of the House of Usher.

Which American vice president founded the newspaper that printed Washington Irving's first letters in 1802?

Aaron Burr liked the young satirist's letters enough to send clippings to his daughter Theodosia. Irving's brother Peter edited the paper.

Which fur magnate persuaded Washington Irving to write a history of his trading colony on the Oregon coast?

John Jacob Astor later named Irving in his will as first chairman of the Astor Library, a forerunner of the New York Public Library.

Washington Irving's A Tour on the Prairies recounts his 1832 ride through Indian Territory, now which state?

Oklahoma was the frontier Irving crossed with a federal commissioner on a surveying expedition. The book was his first written and published in America since 1809.

Washington Irving trained as what before turning to writing, barely passing the qualifying examination in 1806?

A lawyer in name only, Irving admitted he was a poor student and scraped through the bar. Within months he was lampooning the city's politics in print instead.

A friendship struck in Rome in 1805 nearly persuaded Washington Irving to take up which career?

Painter was nearly Irving's calling after he befriended the American artist Washington Allston in Rome. He later wrote that his lot in life was differently cast.

An outbreak of which disease in 1798 sent the teenage Washington Irving upriver to the valley he later made famous?

Yellow fever led the family to send him to stay with a friend upriver, where he first met the Dutch customs and local ghost tales he later used.

In Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, what lies beside the vanished schoolmaster's hat the next morning?

A pumpkin, found smashed beside the brook, suggests the goblin's flung head was nothing of the kind. The schoolmaster's rival burst into a hearty laugh whenever it was mentioned.

Which burly rival of the schoolmaster in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow rides a horse named Daredevil?

Brom Bones leads the heiress to the altar soon after his rival disappears. He looks exceedingly knowing whenever the tale of the midnight chase is told.

In Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman is said to be the ghost of which soldier?

A Hessian trooper, one of the German soldiers hired by the British, lost his head to a cannonball in some nameless battle and rides out nightly in search of it.

From which state does the schoolmaster hero of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow come to teach?

Connecticut, the narrator jokes, supplies the Union with country schoolmasters as readily as frontier woodsmen. The newcomer is an outsider among the valley's old Dutch families.

Which game are the strange bearded men playing when Rip finds them in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle?

Ninepins explains the thunder, the old villagers decide: whenever it rumbles over the mountains, the ghostly crew must be bowling again.

What is the name of Rip's faithful dog, his companion on the mountain in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle?

Wolf is as henpecked as his master, and the pair slip away to the woods together for peace. When Rip wakes, the dog is nowhere to be found.

In Washington Irving's The Devil and Tom Walker, which pirate's buried treasure does the Devil offer to Tom?

Captain Kidd, in the tale's legend, buried his gold near a swamp outside Boston with the Devil as its guardian, then was hanged before he could come back for it.

In Washington Irving's The Devil and Tom Walker, which trade does Tom take up after refusing to deal in slaves?

A moneylender is what Tom becomes, so miserly in his new wealth that he buys a grand coach and half-starves the horses that pull it.

In Washington Irving's The Adventure of the German Student, what had killed the hero's mysterious lover a day earlier?

The guillotine had taken her head, as the hero learns when a policeman undoes the black band at her neck. Irving heard the grisly anecdote from the Irish poet Thomas Moore.

Which English manor, home of the family in his Christmas sketches, titles Washington Irving's 1822 book?

Bracebridge Hall let Irving revisit the hospitable family of his Christmas sketches in more than 50 loosely connected tales and essays.

Washington Irving set both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the valley of which river?

The Hudson later became home, when Irving bought a neglected cottage on its bank in 1835. Both tales lean on the ghost lore of its old Dutch settlers.

Which Moorish palace did Washington Irving move into in 1829, later filling a book with its legends?

The Alhambra gave him an apartment for about three months and the run of its archives. A plaque now marks the rooms where he wrote.

Washington Irving served from 1842 as American minister to which country, the subject of several of his histories?

Spain was in upheaval for most of his posting, with warring factions vying for control of the child queen Isabella II. Homesick and unwell, he came home in 1846.

In which mountains does Rip fall asleep in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, after a drink from a stranger's keg?

The Catskills had a witching effect on his boyish imagination, Irving wrote, yet he admitted he had never set foot in them when he wrote the tale.

Which name did Washington Irving give in 1841 to his riverside cottage north of New York City, now a museum?

Sunnyside began as a neglected cottage that swallowed two decades of repairs. The mounting bills pushed Irving into writing regularly for a magazine.

As a magazine editor, Washington Irving was among the first to reprint the 1814 poem that became which song?

The Star-Spangled Banner began as a poem titled Defense of Fort McHenry. Irving ran it in the Analectic Magazine, where he also wrote lives of naval heroes.

In Washington Irving's revised A History of New York, Saint Nicholas soars over the treetops in which vehicle?

A flying wagon carried Irving's Saint Nicholas in a dream sequence he added to the book, an invention that others later dressed up as Santa Claus.

Under which pen name did Washington Irving publish The Sketch Book, the collection that made him famous in Europe?

Geoffrey Crayon made his debut with The Sketch Book and stayed with Irving for the rest of his career, narrating several later collections.

Which newspaper hoax did Washington Irving stage in 1809 to drum up interest in A History of New York?

A missing person notice, the first of a series, sought an old Dutch historian said to have vanished from his hotel. The landlord then threatened to publish the manuscript he left behind to cover the bill.

Which war did Washington Irving at first oppose, like many merchants, before enlisting on a governor's staff?

The War of 1812 won his support only when the British burned the capital in 1814. He joined the staff of the governor of New York but saw no real action.

Under which pseudonym did the 19-year-old Washington Irving send satirical letters to the Morning Chronicle in 1802?

Jonathan Oldstyle, a name chosen to evoke his Federalist leanings, was the first of Irving's many masks. A Philadelphia editor travelled to the city hoping to recruit him.

Which fiancée of Washington Irving died aged 17 in 1809, while he was finishing his first major book?

Matilda Hoffman's death left Irving in mourning as he completed his comic A History of New York, the satire that made his name that December.

Which president appointed Washington Irving to a European embassy in 1842, on Daniel Webster's recommendation?

John Tyler's offer was hard to accept. Irving called leaving his dear little cottage a severe trial, but reckoned the post would help him afford its upkeep.

By which folk name is the Devil, disguised as a woodsman, known in Washington Irving's The Devil and Tom Walker?

Old Scratch is found chopping down trees, each trunk branded with the name of a prominent and wealthy colonist.

In Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, what is the name of the schoolmaster's borrowed plough horse?

Gunpowder, despite the fiery name, is a broken-down old horse that has outlived almost everything but his viciousness.

Which Irish-born writer, whom one critic accused Washington Irving of copying, became the subject of his 1849 biography?

Oliver Goldsmith, author of The Vicar of Wakefield, got an admiring life from Irving, who also believed he had written the nursery classic Goody Two-Shoes.

Washington Irving's father, a Royal Navy petty officer turned New York merchant, came from which part of Scotland?

Orkney was home to William Irving, who married a Cornish woman while serving at sea. Their son prized his Scottish roots and used the family's holly leaves as an emblem.

Which American actor spent decades playing the title role in stage versions of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle?

Joseph Jefferson went on acting Rip for 40 years and reprised the part in early silent films. His best-known version opened in London in 1865.

Which English novelist called Washington Irving the ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old?

William Thackeray coined the tag, and critics kept repeating it for a century. It suited a man who lived abroad for 17 years and later served his country as a diplomat.

Which name did Washington Irving first give his cottage, later reusing it as the title of an 1855 collection?

Wolfert's Roost honoured Wolfert Acker, a Dutch-American who lived on the site in colonial times. Irving wrote a sketch about him and the place.