Washington Irving: An American Study, 1802-1832

by William L. Hedges

Originally published in 1965. Despite his prolificacy, Washington Irving remained an underexamined figure among literary scholars at the time William L. Hedges published his definitive study of the author in 1965. Most contemporary scholars believed that Irving's central contribution to the American literary tradition was that his work was "polished" and "suave." These scholars maintained that Irving's aristocratic sensibilities defined the stylistic choices of his literary works. To assume this, Hedges contends, is to "both let the man and the work slip beyond one's grasp." Hedges demonstrates that much of Irving's work can be understood in the context of his conflict between federalist and conservative politics. Irving, in other words, found himself incapable of committing to a coherent set of beliefs or attitudes, and this cultural uneasiness manifested itself in his early work. Washington An American Study, 1802-1832 tries to correct some of the misapprehension about Irving's place in nineteenth-century American literature.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1965

Reviews

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literature scholars, ironically, often write in prose that many of us find impenetrable. That’s not the case with William L. Hedges. This book is a classic in studies of Washington Irving, and apart from sections where you’ll need to have read a lot of Irving’s writings to make sense of it, Hedges does a wonderful job of bringing out many engrossing connections that Irving’s writing made. Toward the end he starts leaving a few untranslated quotes, which is unfortunate. In the sixties educated readers, however, probably knew French.

While focusing only on thirty years, this book covers a lot of ground. The first chapter, on Irving trying to find his style, is quite good. There are shiny bits scattered through the chapters chronicling Irving’s development as a writer and trying to figure out what it meant to be an American writer (there really was no such thing at the time). Hedges frequently, and helpfully, ties Irving in with Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and others. The insights here are remarkable, and, to me, sometimes breathtaking.

His chapter on the way a story is told is excellent. While not deeply probing psychologically, this book has aged quite well in Irving studies. In my blog post about it (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) I try to reflect on how this early writing shows, somehow, the American outlook at the period. It’s a journey worth taking periodically, and thinking along the way. This is a very good book to help make sense of an early writer’s outlook.