X-Nico

17 unusual facts about Washington Irving


Alcatraz Library

Other authors include Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, Washington Irving, Zane Grey, Hamilton Garland, Alexandre Dumas, Daniel Defoe, Joseph Conrad, Cervantes and magazines such as Adventure to Time, Better Homes and Gardens and Library Digest.

Battle of Autas

The non-Muslim author Washington Irving claims that the tribes were hostile to Muhammad because he was spreading Islam by the sword, which greatly displeased the tribes.

Beaver Kill

They told others of the river's clear waters and ample supply of trout, which Washington Irving wrote of in 1819, noting that its isolation kept it out of easy reach of city dwellers attracted to the new sport of angling.

Charles Francis Coghlan

Buckstone passed on the play, but instead gave him the chance to play Monsieur Mafoi, a small role in “The Pilgrim of Love” a play adapted by Lord Byron from Irving’s “Legends of the Alhambra” that opened at the Haymarket on, April 9, 1860.

Fort Gibson

The American author Washington Irving accompanied troops exploring the southern Plains west of Fort Gibson in 1832.

Humboldt River

Washington Irving's 1837 book describing the Bonneville expedition called it "Ogden's River", the name used by many early travelers.

Johnnycake

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term hoecake first occurs in 1745, and the term is used by American writers such as Joel Barlow and Washington Irving.

Knickerbocker Handicap

The Knickerbocker is named for a fictional character, Diedrich Knickerbocker, from Washington Irving's Knickerbocker History of New York a spoof on the imagined colony of New Netherland.

La Salle Academy

In 1856, St. Vincent's School moved to East Second Street and Second Avenue, a plot of land that once belonged to Washington Irving.

Lexington Avenue

Ruggles named the southern section, below 20th Street, which opened in 1833, after his friend Washington Irving.

Robert Edge Pine

The portrait of Washington was engraved for Irving's Life of Washington, but it is weak in characterization.

Roger de Coverley

The dance plays a part in the Dorothy Sayers short story "The Queen's Square", and is mentioned in Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent..

Sarah Curran

Washington Irving, one of America's greatest early writers, devoted "The Broken Heart" in his magnum opus The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. to the romance between Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran, citing it as an example of how a broken heart can be fatal.

Sleepy Hollow, Illinois

Various streets in the village are named after characters in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Sophie Gimber Kuhn

In a production which opened on December 24, 1860, Kuhn played Lowenna in Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving.

Thomas Wildman

The Wildmans entertained many guests who wished to visit the home of Lord Byron, including Franz Liszt and Washington Irving.

Wolfert Acker

One person who bought his land was Washington Irving who took an existing structure and made it into his romantic Sunnyside out of it.


Aston Hall

Washington Irving used Aston Hall as the model for Bracebridge Hall in his The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent..

Augustus B. Woodward

His biographer, Arthur M. Woodford, describes Woodward as a prototype of Washington Irving’s Ichabod Crane.

Dale Cemetery

Samuel Youngs (1760-1839), first interment at Dale Cemetery, inspiration for the character Ichabod Crane in his friend Washington Irving's story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Dimitri Ivanovich Dolgorukov

He held several diplomatic posts, first in Istanbul, Turkey, and then in the Russian Embassy in Madrid, Spain (1826–1830), in the late 1820s travelling with American diplomat and writer Washington Irving from Seville to Granada and staying at the Alhambra together between May and June 1827.

E. W. Kemble

Kemble subsequently illustrated several other famous books, including Twain's Puddin' Head Wilson, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Washington Irving's Knickerbocker History of New York, and many of Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus stories.

Edward J. Kuntze

Among his works are statuettes of William Shakespeare, Johann von Goethe, Washington Irving, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Abraham Lincoln; a statue of “Psyche,” one of “Columbia,” “Puck,” “Puck on Horseback,” and “Puck on the Warpath”; a bust of “Mirth”; “Merlin and Vivien,” in bas-relief; and many medallion portraits and busts.

George Palmer Putnam

George Putnam published the books of many classic American authors including his close friend Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

"Gotham" as a term for New York City was coined by Washington Irving in an 1807 November issue of his literary magazine, Salmagundi, based on the legends of the English village of Gotham, whose inhabitants are known for their folly.

J. Carson Brevoort

In 1838 he went abroad as private secretary to Washington Irving, U. S. Minister to Spain.

Poets' Walk Park

The park has been visited by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867) and many literary contemporaries, including Washington Irving (1783–1859) and William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) and Jack Kerouac (1922-1969).

Public transport bus service

In 1831, New Yorker Washington Irving remarked of Britain's Reform Act (finally passed in 1832): "The great reform omnibus moves but slowly." Steam buses emerged in the 1830s as competition to the horse-drawn buses.

Robert Ball Hughes

After a short stay in New York, and then Philadelphia, he settled in Boston, where he produced busts of Washington Irving (1836) and Edward Livingston, and a large bronze of mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch for Mount Auburn Cemetery (1847).

The National Portrait Gallery contains Ball Hughes' busts of Nathaniel Bowditch, Washington Irving, James Kent, John Marshall, and his medallion of John Trumbull.

Samuel Youngs

He was a friend of Washington Irving and may have served as inspiration for the character Ichabod Crane in Irving's story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow".

Thayer Hotel

The West Point Hotel served the academy for over a century, hosting a long list of dignitaries such as Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Winfield Scott, William Tecumseh Sherman, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and James Whistler.

The New England Primer

The text for L is alluded to in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: . . . "like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold" .

Thomas Jefferson Building

From left to right when one faces the building, they are Demosthenes (portico north side), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Babbington Macaulay, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sir Walter Scott and Dante Alighieri (portico south side).

Wiedergänger

Another form of the physical wiedergänger is the headless rider that, frequently mentioned in West German legends, entered into world literature and even into the history of film through the American poet Washington Irving and his novel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.