Washington Irving: How Life Experience Shaped His Writing Nathan Buckingham College

Washington Irving’s name has become almost synonymous with American Literature. Characters of his like Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle are cultural icons known by nearly anyone with passing knowledge of literature, and many of his works have been adapted to broadway musicals, plays, and countless movies. Irving’s well-traveled tale is one of resistance; a life spent rejecting the conventions of his time in favor of forging his own path forward, in true American fashion, to tell the stories he wanted to tell—difficulties be damned. He was one of the first to chisel an identity out of the untamed and often scoffed-at wilderness of the American literature frontier, commanding world-wide respect and acclaim for a young country that, while brave, was still trying to find itself. But how did Irving’s life influence his writing, and how did the best-selling author overcome adversity to become the pioneer that paved the way for the great writers that followed him, legends like Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and James Fenimore Cooper?

Born the eleventh child to wealthy parents in New York, Irving was a dreamy and sometimes lazy child who would often avoid the prayer and school responsibilities to devour adventure books like...