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

If you've picked up The Sketch Book only to read "Rip Van Winkle" or "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (when The Sketch Book was reprinted later in his life, Irving rearranged the order of the stories to move "Sleepy Hollow" into the final position, ending the book with a slam dunk), give it a try again-and this time read all 34 tales. Trust me, it won't take long. Find out how really good-how charming-Irving and Crayon can be, and then take a moment to remember that you're reading America's first genuine international bestseller-published on this date in 1819.

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