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By the late 1820s, Irving had gained a reputation throughout Europe and America as a great writer and thinker. Irving
received many important honors because of his popularity. The Spanish were so pleased with Irving's writing that in
1828, they elected him to the Real Academia de la Historia. In 1830, Irving received a gold medal in history from the
Royal Society of Literature in London, and also received honorary degrees from Oxford, Columbia, and Harvard.
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Born in New York City, on April 3, 1783, Washington Irving was the first American writer
to make a living solely from writing. His parents were great admirers of our first president, George Washington; hence the
name Washington.
Irving's interests included writing, architecture and landscape design,
traveling, and diplomacy. He wrote under pen names; one was "Diedrich Knickerbocker." In 1809, using this
pen name, Irving wrote "A History of New-York" that describes and makes fun of the lives of the early Dutch settlers
of Manhattan. Eventually, this pen name came to mean a person from New York.
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Irving enjoyed visiting different places and a large part of his life was spent in Europe. He often wrote about
the places he visited. In spite of his foreign travels, Irving's imagination frequently drew memories of his childhood in
New York State. These memories were reflected in letters that he had written to family and friends from Europe, as well
as in the stories from his most famous work, "The Sketch-Book". Published in 1819 under another pen name, "Geoffrey Crayon,
Gent," "The Sketch-Book" includes the short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle".
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Feeling a desire to be among fellow Americans and his family,
in 1832 Irving returned from Europe to New York where he established his home Sunnyside in Tarrytown. Irving never married
or had children. Rather, for the next twenty-five years he shared Sunnyside with his brother Ebenezer and Ebenezer's
five daughters. During this period, when Irving traveled or was sent on a diplomatic mission, he always had a home and family
to which to return.
On November 28, 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, Washington
Irving died at Sunnyside surrounded by his family. He was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at the Old Dutch Church in
Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.
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