ABSTRACT
Washington Irving's one unquestionable gift was as an excellent social and critical barometer. It considers popular traditions of the kind as fair foundations for authors of fiction to build upon, and had made use of the one in question accordingly' Irving argues that folktales are communal building blocks of narrative. The chapter addresses Irving's influence on British short fiction has been generally neglected, and it is this aspect of his writing. To reiterate the point he makes in Story Telling', every narrative is indebted in its own way to some hackneyed tale', and there is no such thing as a truly new story. Dolph Heyliger's story is Geoffrey Crayon's own narrative offering, although Irving once again redirects his New World tale via Dietrich Knickerbocker who is in turn furnished with a character sketch in The Historian'. Irving's writing was central to the development of British short fiction in the early nineteenth century for a several reasons.
