Readers of the HVBlog know full well that we are huge fans of Brian Jay Jones for many reasons, not the least of which is because he graciously sits in for us on occasion, allowing us to put down our pens...err...laptops, and let his fingers do the talking.

Now, with The Dark Knight all the rage (94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer! Practically unheard of for a mainstream flick!), we think it apropos to hear Brian's take on how Washington Irving, yes, Irving, is a Batman ancestor. Brian, take it away:

Batman fans owe a debt of gratitude to Washington Irving. Why? Two words: Gotham City.

In 1806, 23-year-old Washington Irving was New York City's worst attorney. Bored with his legal practice -- he would allegedly abandon the only client he ever had -- Irving persuaded a close friend, James Kirke Paulding, to join him in launching a literary project. The object of this self-published effort, as Paulding would put it, "was to ridicule the follies and foibles of the fashionable world."

The result of this collaboration, the satirical magazine Salmagundi (a 19^th-century dish equivalent to today's chef's salad), made its first appearance on January 24, 1807 -- and it was an immediate smash. Writing under a variety of disguises -- Will Wizard, Anthony Evergreen, Pindar Cockloft, Mustapha Rub-A-Dub Keli Khan -- Irving and Paulding poked fun at New York fashion, politics, society, and culture. More than anything, it was a 19^th-century Mad magazine, and at the time, no one had seen anything quite like it.

Despite its popularity at the time, Salmagundi might be a mere literary footnote, a blip in Irving's writing career, had Irving not inadvertently created a brand name in its seventeenth issue.

Appearing in the November 11, 1807 issue was a piece by Irving describing a (fictional) library full of rare and out-of print books. Among those books was one particular volume - "a literary curiosity" -- from which Irving now reprinted a chapter for his readers:

Over the next few pages, in a mock history of New York, Irving related how the "thrice renowned and delectable city of GOTHAM did suffer great discomfiture, and was reduced to perilous extremity." "The antient and venerable city of Gotham," Irving continued, "was, peradventure, possessed of mighty treasures, and did, moreover, abound with all manner of fish and flesh, and eatables and drinkables, and such like delightsome and wholesome excellencies withal."

While the word "Gotham" had appeared in the pages of Salmagundi before-Paulding had made a passing reference to a musician, "a gentleman amateur in Gotham" as far back as issue two-Irving was the first to explicitly attach the name to New York, and to refer to its citizens as "Gothamites."

The word, which in Anglo-Saxon means "Goat's Town," came from a real English town in Nottinghamshire, near Sherwood Forest. According to English fable, the King's Highway would be built wherever the king set foot -- and if the king walked through your town, you were sunk, for the throne would then perform a royal taking and construct a highway right down Main Street. To prevent King John from entering Gotham, its citizens -- displaying a NIMBY mentality remarkable for the 13th century -- pretended to be crazy, behaving so oddly that snickering scouts advised the king to steer clear of the town. "More fools pass through Gotham than remain in it," the English said, and New York readers grinned in appreciation. The name stuck.

So, there you go. Two hundred years later, Bill Finger and Bob Kane poached Irving's nickname and grafted it onto their own dark and highly-stylized vision of New York City. In a way, that makes Irving -- who created his own iconic American heroes in his own time -- one of the grandfathers of the Batman legacy. And Washington Irving -- that great lover of pulp novels and secret identities -- would probably be pretty proud of that.

The HVBlog has already sung the praises of Brian Jay Jones, author of last year's brilliant and insightful Washington Irving bio, An American Original. Now, on June 23, a big day for any serious Irving aficionado, we're thrilled to have Mr. J on board as a guest blogger writing on a rather timely historical subject...

I yield the balance of my time (err, this post) to the right honorable gentleman from Maryland...Take it away, Brian!

One hundred and eighty-nine years ago today, the American bestseller was born.

On Wednesday, June 23, 1819, bookstalls in New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia offered for sale a 93-page volume of five short stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman. Nowhere on the title page-nor anywhere inside, for that matter-was the author's real name. But with the help of a well-oiled publicity machine-made up mostly of one close friend with a knack for writing well-placed book reviews-it was made quickly clear that Geoffrey Crayon was actually a 36-year-old New Yorker named Washington Irving.

The Sketch Book wasn't Irving's first book-that distinction falls to A History of New York-but it was the first he had written in nearly ten years, and Irving was nervous about his reappearance before the American public. "The following writings are published on experiment." Irving (as Crayon) wrote in an opening preface. "Should his writings . . . be well received, he cannot conceal that it would be a source of the purest gratification."

Irving had reason to be anxious, for The Sketch Book was a gamble, in more ways than one.

By the time of The Sketch Book's arrival in New York in 1819, Irving had been living in England for nearly four years, self-exiling himself in London following the bankruptcy of the family trading business-a humiliating process that stung Irving for the rest of his life. With little money and few prospects, Irving spent 1817 and 1818 quietly and persistently dabbling at writing, filling notebooks with short stories and observational essays. Meanwhile, Irving's oldest brother William scrambled to secure for Irving a plum political appointment, and in the fall of 1818 urged his brother to return home.

To the surprise and disappointment of his family, Irving refused, choosing to remain in England to take his chances as a writer. "I am determined not to return home," Irving said, "until I have sent some writings before me that shall, if they have merit, make me return to smiles, rather than skulk back to the pity of my friends." On the edge of depression and running out of money, Irving spent the next few months preparing The Sketch Book for publication, finally mailing the five stories that would appear in the first volume of The Sketch Book to his brother in New York on March 1, 1819.

To Irving's relief, The Sketch Book was an immediate hit on its publication in June. Readers responded enthusiastically to the first four stories in the volume: "The Author's Account of Himself," in which Irving introduced Geoffrey Crayon as his narrator; "The Voyage," detailing Crayon's ocean voyage from the United States to England; "Roscoe," a tribute to the English writer and historian William Roscoe, who Irving had befriended in Liverpool; and "The Wife," a sentimental price in which the new wife of an impoverished gentleman teaches her husband that money can't buy happiness. But it was the final tale in the volume, "Rip van Winkle"-a story Irving had written in near-complete form in an all-night writing session- that readers loved best, and kept the volume selling briskly.

The Sketch Book would be published in seven installments, totaling 34 stories and essays, over the next 15 months, each one a bestseller. Copies of the book were so popular in England that Irving put an English edition to press in London-with a critical assist from friend and mentor Walter Scott, who rescued The Sketch Book from a failed British printer-where it also met with immediate success, outselling even the works of Lord Byron ("Crayon is good!" Lord Byron said enthusiastically.)

The Sketch Book made Washington Irving internationally famous, and introduced readers to his three most iconic characters: Rip Van Winkle (whose eponymous story appeared in the first installment) and Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, who

HVBlogger loved Freakonomics, as apparently do many others. The book that turns the dismal science on its head remains a best-seller some 18 months after its release.

Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner blogs on NYTimes.com. Yesterday he wrote about the troubles the Mark Twain house in Hartford, Conn., is experiencing. (Sad and scary, indeed). While doing so, he mentions Washington Irving's Sunnyside, stating:

I also love visiting the old homes of interesting people, like Washington Irving. There's nothing like being able to literally walk in the footsteps of someone else from long ago - seeing where they worked, slept, ate, and maybe cheated at cards.

We could not agree more.

Ladies of Liberty: The Women who Shaped our Nation is the latest book by noted political correspondent and author Cokie Roberts. It's a companion volume to Founding Mothers, in which the author pays homage to the women whose patriotism and sacrifice helped create a new nation.

Much to HVBLogger's delight, the newly published book features Louise Livingston (1782-1860) on the front and back cover. Louise was the cosmopolitan and well-traveled widow of Edward Livingston. She and her daughter Coralie Livingston Barton used Montgomery Place, Historic Hudson Valley's Dutchess County jewel, as a summer home and remade its architecture and landscape over a forty-year period. They transformed the site into a handsome, self-sufficient estate.

(Cokie also writes about Rebecca Gratz, who has links with Washington Irving. He gets a couple of mentions, too.)

In 2007, Cokie Roberts worked with Kate Johnson, curator of Historic Hudson Valley, and Catalina Hannan, librarian of Historic Hudson Valley, on the project that would become Ladies of Liberty. The author offers warm thanks to both of them in her Acknowledgements. Bravo to Kate and Cat!

If you want to learn more about the book click here.

Don't know of Cokie Roberts? Oh, come on. Yes you do! Among other career highlights, she is a political commentator for ABC News and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. From 1996 to 2002, she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program, This Week.

Brian Jay Jones is NOT the dead Rolling Stone, but he is the author of the most recent bio of Washington Irving, called "An American Original."

Besides being a total Irving fanatic and pop culture junkie, Brian is an all around cool guy who makes his daily bread as a policy wonk in Maryland.

He spoke at Irving's homestead of Sunnyside last fall, captivating the crowd with his tales of Irving's exploits. His book takes a different, more personality-based approach than the first, also excellent, Irving bio published in 2007, "The Original Knickerbocker" by the historian Andrew Burstein, who provides an in-depth analysis of Irving as an American icon.

We enjoy Brian's Literary Conceits blog, particularly his recent four-part series covering an NYC trip, and thought you might too.