IRVING 201 IRVING manager, son of Sir Henry Irving, born in 1872. He was educated at Marl- borough College and in Paris. For three years he lived in Russia where he studied diplomacy. He left this for the stage in 1893. After tours in provincial companies, he played in his father's com- pany from 1900 to 1904. This was fol- lowed by a tour in America. In 1912 he played leading parts in several im- portant plays, including several Shake- spearian plays. While returning to England in May, 1914, he was drowned in the "Empress of Ireland" disaster. He wrote several plays, including "Peter the Great": "Richard Lovelace^'; "The Typhoon." IRVING, WASHINGTON, one of the greatest American authors of the nine- teenth century, born in New York in 1783. Most of his early education was gained by tramping through the beauti- ful Westchester region and the Hudson Highlands, by lounging on the docks to watch the arrival and departure of the ships that seemed to him to ply between fairy lands of romance and his native city, and by visits to the theatre and reading whole libraries of romance. He studied law, but rebelled against it, and did not make a very active practitioner. He had no taste for politics, his leaning being rather toward Hamilton's theories than Jefferson's. In his letters, and in his "Knickerbocker History of New York," he expresses distaste for many of the aspects of American politics, and he satirizes Jefferson's conduct of foreign affairs. His first writings were rather thin imitations of the eighteenth cen- tury English essayists, satires on fash- ions and manners, the first of them pub- lished in his brother Peter's newspaper, and continued, after his return from his first European journey, in "Salma- gundi." This last, in which he had as collaborators his brother William and James Kirke Paulding, appeared twice a month for about a year (1807), and made a prodigious success. Meantime, Irving went abroad (1804- 1806) where he indulged to the full his love of romance and tradition surround- ing ancient lands and cities. "My na- tive country was full of promise," he wrote; "Europe was rich in the ac- cumulated treasures of age." It became one of the objects of his life to give, so far as literature could avail, some- thing of the charm of tradition to what he held to be a natural setting as ro- mantic, especially around New York, as any scenes to be found abroad. He found his first opportunity to do this in his "Knickerbocker History" (1809), first planned as a burlesque of a pom- pous and pedantic work by Dr. Samuel Mitchill but soon developing into an in- dependent work of astonishing variety and charm. The book owes much to Rabelais, "Don Quixote," and other writ- ers of burlesque romance, and also to Fielding, Sterne and other English mas- ters of the eighteenth century; but it also has a high originality of its own. His portraits of the Dutch governors; his sa- tire of contemporary politics under the guise of a sober history of the old Dutch colony ; the abounding spirits and rollick- ing humor; the remarkable way in which it translates the spirit of old romance WASHINGTON IRVING to the American continent; above all, the flavor of the book, urbane, witty, keen, even if often exaggerated, — these make it the first important work of the pure imagination to appear in America. He published it as if it were the work of an imaginary Dr. Diedrich Knicker- bocker, who has become a well known figure in American letters; he dedicated it to the New York Historical Society, and it has often been classed by libra- rians among legitimate "histories." After this success Irving published nothing for ten years. He attempted to practice law, engaged mildly in poli- tics, revised his "History," edited a maga- zine, but devoted most of his time to society. During the war with England he was military secretary to the gov- ernor of New York. In May, 1815, he sailed once more for England, expecting only to pay a short visit to his brother, but seventeen years passed before his re-
