Washington Irving and the North American Review

Shortly after his return to the United States from seventeen years abroad, Washington Irving, best known for his short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” published a review of Henry Wheaton’s 1831 book The History of the Northmen in the pages of the North American Review (35.77 October 1832).

Wheaton, a U.S. diplomat appointed to Denmark in 1827, was himself a frequent contributor to the magazine, writing articles from 1818 to 1831 about, among other things, “Public Law of Denmark” (27.61 October 1828), “Scandinavian Mythology, Poetry, and History” (28.62 January 1829), “Ancient Laws of Iceland” (30.67 April 1830), “Danish Grammar” (30.67 April 1830) and “Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature” (33.73 October 1831). (See Wendy Hoofnagle’s “Anglo-Saxonism and the Average American,” which deals with this last article, in the 293.5 September-October 2008 issue of the North American Review.)

Irving sets up his review of Wheaton’s book by commenting on the American preoccupation with the distant past, pointing out that the American citizen

is captivated by the powerful charm of contrast. Accustomed to a land where everything is bursting into life, and history itself but in its dawning, antiquity has, in fact, for him the effect of novelty; and the fading, but mellow, glories of the past, which linger on the horizon of the Old World relieved the eye, after being dazzled with the rising rays which sparkle up the firmament of the New.

Irving tells us approvingly that in Wheaton

we find one of our countrymen, and a thorough republican, investigating with minute attention some of the most antiquated and dubious tracts of European history, and treating of some of its exhausted and almost forgotten dynasties; yet evincing throughout the enthusiasm of an antiquarian, the liberality of the scholar, and the enlightened toleration of a citizen of the world.

[Interestingly, a portion of this review was reprinted in the magazine in 1927 in the “In Retrospect” section, about which the editors wrote, “It is the purpose of the North American Review to reprint in each number pertinent excerpts from its issues of a century or more ago.” This section is similar to today’s “Past Perfect” column, like Wendy Hoofnagle’s above, which asks writers to select a piece that appeared in the NAR’s back pages and then to update the conversation that was taking place then.]

Many reviews of Irving’s work appeared in the North American Review over the years, including Richard Henry Dana’s review of The Sketch Book (9.25 September 1819), Alexander Hill Everett’s reviews of A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (28.62 January 1829)—which Irving began writing in Madrid with Everett’s assistance as the minister to Spain in 1826—and Tales of the Alhambra (35.77 October 1832)—the same issue in which Irving’s review of Wheaton appears—as well as Edward Everett’s reviews of Bracebridge Hall (15.36 July 1822), Astoria (44.94 January 1837), and perhaps most interesting of all A Tour on the Prairies (41.88 July 1835), which Irving wrote about his travels on the frontier upon returning to the United States in 1832; the book was a popular success, and it was reviewed favorably by Everett in the NAR. The review opens unabashedly, “We regard Washington Irving as the best living writer of English prose. Let those who doubt the correctness of this opinion name his superior. Let our brethren in England name the writer, whom they place before Washington Irving.”

Route traversed by Washington Irving and party in what is today eastern Oklahoma on his “Tour on the Prairies” in 1832. (From Fort Gibson)

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[Each of the Everetts mentioned above, by the way, served as editor of the NAR, Edward from 1820 to 1823 and his older brother Alexander from 1830 to 1835.]

Edward Everett

Alexander Hill Everett