He is best known for his short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving spent years in Europe, reading old fairy tales in hopes of patching together new stories for readers back in the U.S. A high-ranking American official in Spain invited Irving to Madrid where the author could look over reams of documents on the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Using these and other sources, and a few of his own creative liberties, Irving wrote a well-received history of Christopher Columbus and other explorers chartered by Spain to colonize the New World. It was Irving’s flair for the dramatic that gave us the myth that European explorers believed the world was flat. Irving is also believed to be the writer who first gave New York City the nick-name of “Gotham.” It’s an old Anglo-Saxon term meaning “Goat’s Town.”
A painting of Washington Irving by John Wesley Jarvis, 1809
“Great minds have purpose, others have wishes.”
-American writer Washington Irving, born on this day in 1783
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