Tag Archive: 0Washington Irving

I wrote once, years ago, about Washington Irving in Germany. I’ve always been interested in finding material that connects two different countries, two different cultures, through literature. Here’s another, and with an added theatrical dimension: This double bill from 1844 features Shakespeare alongside Irving on the London stage, The Miser’s Well being based on a […]

Washington Irving’s name and fame reached Germany suddenly when in 1819–20 The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. was published in England and America.  Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History of New York (1809), which had appeared ten years earlier and had established Irving’s reputation as a writer, held no appeal for Europe.  Its native satire and its mockery […]