Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Writings (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Free

life, after having established a reputation as the first American man of letters, Irving recalled in an interview how Washington “laid his hand upon my head, and gave me his blessing” (Williams, The Life of Washington Irving, vol. 1, p. 10; see “For Further Reading”). Three generations after the Revolutionary War, George Washington was revered as the father of our country. Irving likewise was recognized as a founding father of America’s national literature.
    Such a title might strike today’s reader as an exaggeration. Irving’s best-known characters, Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane, do not seem substantial enough to serve as foundational figures in an American literary tradition. However, the stories Irving set in Sleepy Hollow, a secluded village in the Hudson River Valley, provided American culture with a local habitation and a name. Along with James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant, Irving was one of America’s pioneer writers. He helped sketch the contours of a cultural landscape that was unique to the United States, not a pale imitation of the literature of England and Europe. Sleepy Hollow is an early example of American authors self-consciously setting out to create an imaginative space for artistic creativity. Nathaniel Hawthorne described this sort of space in his introduction to The Scarlet Letter as “a neutral territory, somewhere between the real-world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other” (Hawthorne, The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. 1, p. 36). By providing such a “neutral territory” for his readers, Irving contributed to the new nation’s efforts to generate a collective cultural memory from native sources.
    In the wake of the American Revolution, as the Constitution was being ratified, the general public sentiment was that a distinctively American literature was essential for the success of America’s democratic experiment. For what did the states share in common other than their opposition to colonial rule? As Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay were publishing The Federalist to promulgate common political principles and beliefs for the nation’s citizens, American authors were also being called on to promote a common set of cultural values. “America must be as independent in literature as she is in politics;” Noah Webster declared, ”as famous for arts as she is for arms” (Spencer, The Quest for Nationality, p. 27). However, the barriers to such cultural independence were formidable. Because there was no international copyright law, American booksellers could reprint English editions without paying royalties. As a result, the literary marketplace was flooded with foreign works. Why publish—or purchase, for that matter—the work of an American writer when one could have the writings of the best-known authors of Britain and Europe for little more than the cost of paper and ink? Magazines and newspapers also capitalized on this situation by reprinting poetry, essays, and criticism culled from the latest British periodicals. An odd phenomenon began to occur: In order for American authors to win approval from the American public, they first had to establish a critical reputation in the British press.
    The extent of the public’s reliance on British critical opinion is captured succinctly in Philip Freneau’s satirical advice “To a New England Poet.”
    Dear bard, I pray you, take the hint,
In England what you write and print,
Republished here in shop, or stall,
Will perfectly enchant us all:
It will assume a different face,
And post your name at every place.
    Cultural subservience to England was further compounded by the British disdain for all things American in the decade following the War of 1812. In the January 1820 issue of the Edinburgh Review, Sydney Smith famously posed the rhetorical question: “In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an