ABSTRACT
The son of William and Sarah Sanders Irving, Washington Irving was born in New York City on April 3, 1783. The youngest of eleven children, he attended four different schools but did not follow his brothers to Columbia College and concluded his formal education when he was sixteen. His earliest publication, the letters attributed to Jonathan Oldstyle, appeared in 1802 in the New York Morning Chronicle, a Democratic newspaper edited by his brother, Peter. Working as a law clerk for Judge Josiah Hoffman, he became friendly with the family and fell in love with the judge's daughter, Matilda. The girl died of consumption in 1809, and Irving, in deep mourning, finished the book he was then working on, Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York and then gave up writing for several years. Turning back to his first love, Irving quickly wrote The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, published first in seven installments and then in a two-volume set.
