American Literature / Unit 6 AML 0505 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Washington Irving, the First American Man of Letters
Captions available
The idea
Youngest of eleven children in a prosperous New York merchant family, Irving read the periodical essay, Shakespeare, Goldsmith and Sterne, wrote as Jonathan Oldstyle for his brothers, and helped found Salmagundi in eighteen-oh-six. His History of New-York of eighteen-oh-nine appeared under the persona Diedrich Knickerbocker.
In practice
Essayist, satirist, and inventor of personas.
Where people slip
The comic history gave New York's writers their name.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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