Washington Irving

Washington Irving is a Book of Biography. This book tells that Irving's name stands as the first landmark in American letters. No other American writer has won the same sort of recognition abroad or esteem at home as became his early in life. And he has lost very little ground, so far as we can judge by the appeal to figures. The copyright on his works ran out long since, and a great many editions of Irving, cheap and costly, complete and incomplete, have been issued from many sources. Yet his original publishers are now selling, year by year, more of his books than ever before. There is little doubt that his work is still widely read, and read not because it is prescribed, but because it gives pleasure; not as the product of a "standard author", but as the expression of a rich and engaging personality, which has written itself like an indorsement across the face of a young nation's literature. It is that of a man so sensitive that the scornful finger of a child might have left him sleepless; so kindly that nobody ever applied to him in vain for sympathy; so modest that the smallest praise embarrassed him.