Life and work
Washington Irving
1783–1859
From the Hudson River to Christmas at Bracebridge Hall
Schoolboys bound for the holidays crowd Irving’s stagecoach. Beyond the coach road lies Bracebridge Hall, where the squire keeps Christmas with the customs he has read about and remembers. The American traveller watches the household gather around its old songs, games and supper table.
Return to the editions ↓English editions in preparation
AETERNUS is preparing an English edition of Old Christmas, based on the illustrated Macmillan edition dated 1876.
Publication details will follow after approval.
Life and work
A life in context
Irving gave his traveller’s attention to places on both sides of the Atlantic. In New York he turned the Dutch colonial past into satire. In the English Christmas sketches he watched a household put its own version of the past into practice.
Explore the life and work
Origins and early years
Washington Irving was born in New York in 1783. In 1809 he published A History of New York under the name Diedrich Knickerbocker, the fictitious historian through whom he told his satire of the city’s Dutch past.
The course of a life
The Sketch Book appeared in 1819–20 while Irving was living in Europe. He returned to the United States in 1832 and bought a cottage on the Hudson near Tarrytown in 1835. There he made his home at Sunnyside. In 1842 he returned to Madrid as United States minister. In 1849 he became the first president of the Astor Library in New York, a position he held until his death in 1859.
The literary work
Five sketches carry the visitor from the winter road to the Christmas dinner. The squire can prescribe the old observances. It takes the children, servants, guests and musicians to make a holiday of them. Randolph Caldecott’s drawings pick out these small parts of the occasion, from the schoolboys in the coach to the company at the table.
The legacy
At Bracebridge Hall the old customs are kept by people who can still laugh at the trouble of keeping them. That humour gives Irving’s Christmas its warmth.