Editing Washington Irving (section)

===Literary reputation===
[[File:Washington Irving Memorial Irvington Washington Irving bust.jpg|thumb|upright|Bust of Washington Irving by [[Daniel Chester French]] in [[Irvington, New York]], not far from Sunnyside]]
Irving is largely credited as the first American Man of Letters and the first to earn his living solely by his pen. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow acknowledged Irving's role in promoting American literature in December 1859: "We feel a just pride in his renown as an author, not forgetting that, to his other claims upon our gratitude, he adds also that of having been the first to win for our country an honourable name and position in the History of Letters".<ref>Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "Address on the Death of Washington Irving", ''Poems and Other Writings'', J.D. McClatchy, editor. (Library of America, 2000).</ref>

Irving perfected the American short story<ref>Leon H. Vincent, ''American Literary Masters'', 1906.</ref> and was the first American writer to set his stories firmly in the United States, even as he poached from German or Dutch folklore. He is also generally credited as one of the first to write in the vernacular and without an obligation to presenting morals or being didactic in his short stories, writing stories simply to entertain rather than to enlighten.<ref>Pattee, Fred Lewis. ''The First Century of American Literature, 1770–1870''. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1935.</ref> He also encouraged many would-be writers. As [[George William Curtis]] noted, there "is not a young literary aspirant in the country, who, if he ever personally met Irving, did not hear from him the kindest words of sympathy, regard, and encouragement".<ref>Kime, Wayne R. ''Pierre M. Irving and Washington Irving: A Collaboration in Life and Letters''. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1977: 152. {{ISBN|0-88920-056-4}}</ref>

Edgar Allan Poe, on the other hand, felt that Irving should be given credit for being an innovator but that the writing itself was often unsophisticated. "Irving is much over-rated", Poe wrote in 1838, "and a nice distinction might be drawn between his just and his surreptitious and adventitious reputation—between what is due to the pioneer solely, and what to the writer".<ref>Poe to N.C. Brooks, Philadelphia, September 4, 1838. Cited in Williams 2:101-02.</ref> A critic for the ''New-York Mirror'' wrote: "No man in the Republic of Letters has been more overrated than Mr. Washington Irving".<ref>Jones, 223</ref> Some critics claimed that Irving catered to British sensibilities, and one critic charged that he wrote "''of'' and ''for'' England, rather than his own country".<ref>Jones, 291</ref> For instance, American critic [[John Neal]] in his 1824–25 critical work ''[[American Writers]]'' dismissed Irving as a poor copy of Goldsmith.<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Watts | first1 = Edward | last2 = Carlson | first2 = David J. | editor1-last = Watts | editor1-first = Edward | editor2-last = Carlson | editor2-first = David J. | chapter = Introduction | page = xiii | title = John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture | year = 2012 | publisher = Bucknell University Press | location = Lewisburg, Pennsylvania | isbn = 978-1-61148-420-5}}</ref>

Other critics were more supportive of Irving's style. [[William Makepeace Thackeray]] was the first to refer to Irving as the "ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old",<ref>Thackeray, ''Roundabout Papers'', 1860.</ref> a banner picked up by writers and critics throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. "He is the first of the American humorists, as he is almost the first of the American writers", wrote critic H.R. Hawless in 1881, "yet belonging to the New World, there is a quaint Old World flavor about him".<ref>Hawless, ''American Humorists'', 1881.</ref> Early critics often had difficulty separating Irving the man from Irving the writer. "The life of Washington Irving was one of the brightest ever led by an author", wrote [[Richard Henry Stoddard]], an early Irving biographer.<ref>Stoddard, ''The Life of Washington Irving'', 1883.</ref> Later critics, however, began to review his writings as all style with no substance. "The man had no message", said critic [[Barrett Wendell]].<ref>Wendell, ''A Literary History of America'', 1901.</ref>

As a historian, Irving's reputation had fallen out of favor but then gained a resurgence. "With the advent of 'scientific' history in the generations that followed his, Irving's historical writings lapsed into disregard and disrespect. To late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians, including [[J. Franklin Jameson|John Franklin Jameson]], [[George Peabody Gooch|G. P. Gooch]], and others, these works were demiromances, worthy at best of veiled condescension. However, more recently several of Irving's histories and biographies have again won praise for their reliability as well as the literary skill with which they were written. Specifically, ''A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus''; ''Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains''; and ''Life of George Washington'' have earned the respect of scholars whose writings on those topics we consider authoritative in our generation: [[Samuel Eliot Morison]], [[Bernard DeVoto]], [[Douglas Southall Freeman]]".<ref name=DLB>Kime, Wayne R. "Washington Irving (3 April 1783-28 November 1859", in Clyde N. Wilson (ed.), ''American Historians, 1607-1865'', [[Dictionary of Literary Biography]] Vol. 30, Detroit: Gale Research, 1984, 155.</ref>