Basic Books, 2007

The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving is the first full-length biography of the early American literary icon in more than seven decades, and the first ever by a professional historian.  It recovers Irving as a political satirist of the first order, and enlarges on his dramatic use of nostalgia, sentimentalism and the Gothic imagination.  It traces this native New Yorker’s world travels as a writer and, in later years, his efforts as a U.S. ambassador.  Throughout the narrative, the reader will find a provocative examination of nineteenth-century bachelor culture—Irving was a lifelong bachelor who incorporated bachelors into many of his stories.