Editing Washington Irving (section)

====''The Sketch Book''====
[[File:TheSketchbookTitlePage.jpg|thumb|left|upright|The front page of ''The Sketch Book'' (1819)]]

Irving spent the next two years trying to bail out the family firm financially but eventually had to declare bankruptcy.<ref>Hellman, 97.</ref> With no job prospects, he continued writing throughout 1817 and 1818. In the summer of 1817, he visited [[Walter Scott]], beginning a lifelong personal and professional friendship.<ref>Jones, 154-60.</ref>

Irving composed the short story "Rip Van Winkle" overnight while staying with his sister Sarah and her husband, [[Henry van Wart]], in [[Birmingham|Birmingham, England]], a place that inspired other works as well.<ref>Jones, 169.</ref> In October 1818, Irving's brother William secured for Irving a post as chief clerk to the United States Navy and urged him to return home.<ref>William Irving Jr. to Washington Irving, New York, October 14, 1818, Williams, 1:170-71.</ref> Irving turned the offer down, opting to stay in England to pursue a writing career.<ref>Washington Irving to Ebenezer Irving, [London, late November 1818], ''Works'', 23:536.</ref>

In the spring of 1819, Irving sent to his brother Ebenezer in New York a set of short prose pieces that he asked be published as ''[[The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.]]'' The first installment, containing "Rip Van Winkle", was an enormous success, and the rest of the work was equally successful; it was issued in 1819–1820 in seven installments in New York and in two volumes in London ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" appeared in the sixth issue of the New York edition and the second volume of the London edition).<ref>See reviews from ''Quarterly Review'' and others, in ''The Sketch Book'', xxv–xxviii; PMI 1:418–19.</ref>

Like many successful authors of this era, Irving struggled against literary bootleggers.<ref>Burstein, 114</ref> In England, some of his sketches were reprinted in periodicals without his permission, a legal practice as there was no international copyright law at the time. To prevent further piracy in Britain, Irving paid to have the first four American installments published as a single volume by John Miller in London.

Irving appealed to Walter Scott for help procuring a more reputable publisher for the remainder of the book. Scott referred Irving to his own publisher, London powerhouse [[John Murray (publisher, born 1778)|John Murray]], who agreed to take on ''The Sketch Book''.<ref>Irving, Washington. "Preface to the Revised Edition", ''The Sketch Book'', ''Works'', 8:7; Jones, 188-89.</ref> From then on, Irving would publish concurrently in the United States and Britain to protect his copyright, with Murray as his English publisher of choice.<ref>McClary, Ben Harris, ed.  ''Washington Irving and the House of Murray''. (University of Tennessee Press, 1969).</ref>

Irving's reputation soared, and for the next two years, he led an active social life in Paris and Great Britain, where he was often feted as an anomaly of literature: an upstart American who dared to write English well.<ref>See comments of William Godwin, cited in PMI, 1:422; Lady Littleton, cited in PMI 2:20.</ref>