America's Most Famous Nap

"Washington Irving was born just as the news reached New York City: The war with England was over. To celebrate, his mother named him after the victorious American general. When he was a boy of 6, Irving was out for a walk with a Scottish maidservant, who spotted George Washington, now the nation's first president, on a Manhattan street. The enterprising maidservant followed him into a shop."

"Thus anointed, Irving went on to become America's original literary celebrity. During the first half of the 19th century, Charles Dudley Warner wrote in The Atlantic in 1880, "probably no citizen of the republic, except the Father of his Country, had so wide a reputation as his namesake, Washington Irving." Irving wrote one of the first, and still one of the best, American ghost stories: " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," about a Hessian soldier who lost his head to a Patriot cannonball."

"Yet the story that established Irving's literary reputation is, at first glance, not a likely one to build a new national literature around. Irving wrote it during a sojourn in Britain. He took its bones from a German folktale. And although set in the Revolutionary era, the story doesn't dramatize America's fight for independence. Rather, the protagonist dozes right through it."

Washington Irving received George Washington's blessing as a child after being named for the general. He rose to national prominence in the early 19th century and earned wide reputation as a literary celebrity. His output included The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, satirical sketches, romantic tales, travelogues, and a five-volume biography of George Washington. Rip Van Winkle originated during a sojourn in Britain and drew on a German folktale; it is set in the Revolutionary era while its protagonist sleeps through the conflict. Rip Van Winkle remains familiar yet is less frequently anthologized.

Read at The Atlantic