Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Washington Irving Sketch Book: Reflections on an American Writer

A Washington Irving Sketch Book: Reflections on an American Writer

Lopate, Phillip

Hardcover

Literary FiguresLiterary Criticism

Publisher Price: $28.95

ISBN10: 0691284431
ISBN13: 9780691284439
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Aug 18 2026
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.05
Height: 1.20 Width: 5.60 Depth: 8.60
Language: English

A richly textured portrait of an American man of letters who came to exemplify the writer's life with all its setbacks and triumphs

Washington Irving (1783-1859) is often considered America's first professional writer, supporting himself and his family amid the ups and downs of literary fortune. He burst on the scene with his uproarious History of New York, followed by his Sketch Book, a collection of personal essays and short stories that includes Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. As an essayist and teacher, Phillip Lopate identifies with Irving, inspired by his humane and elegant prose style, and by Irving's courage and persistence in the face of setbacks and his own limitations as a writer.

In this illuminating book, Lopate reflects on Irving and his extensive body of work through a series of warmly sympathetic sketches of his own. Irving was the first American writer to attain international renown, attracting such devoted fans as Charles Dickens and Lord Byron, and while he may have been overrated in his day, he has since become undeservedly neglected. A lifelong bachelor, he was urbane, popular, and socially adept, mixing with royals as well as paupers, yet underneath it all he was a loner and a melancholic. Lopate describes how Irving constantly reinvented himself, first as a satirist, then a belletrist, at times a hack writer, and finally as a serious biographer of figures like George Washington and the Prophet Muhammad. Along the way, he explains why minor writers like Irving have their enduring fascinations.

Delving into all that is likable and perplexing about the man once considered America's most famous writer, A Washington Irving Sketch Book brings Irving closer to today's readers, capturing the charm of his work and the vicissitudes of literary fashion.

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