Bracebridge Hall: or The Humorists

By Washington Irving

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was an American author of the early nineteenth century. Best known for his short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle, he was also a prolific essayist, biographer and historian. He spoke fluent Spanish, which served him well in his writings on that country, and he could read several other languages, including German and Dutch. His first book was A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. He travelled on the Western frontier in the 1830s and recorded his glimpses of Western tribes in A Tour on the Prairies. He spoke against the mishandling of relations with the Native American tribes by Europeans and Americans. He popularized the nickname "Gotham" for New York City, and is credited with inventing the expression "the Almighty dollar."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Classics
• Release date: Jan 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781633554672

Washington Irving

Washington Irving Was born in New York City in 1783. He lived in the United States, England, and Spain (where he served as an American diplomatic attache). A prolific author, Irving wrote The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York, The Alhambra, and biographies of George Washington and Christopher Columbus, among other works. He is best remembered, however, for his two most famous stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."

Reviews for Bracebridge Hall

[gbill_7 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Irving warns us in the first chapter that this is not a novel of great adventure, it’s one of everyday English scenes in the country, and he’s right about that. Character sketches can be interesting but for the most part the ones here seem cliché, and the novel is uninteresting. I give it one star because of the joy I found in picking up the 1887 edition in a Berkeley bookstore, featuring an inlaid cover and gilt pages, and I give it another star for including roughly 150 illustrations from R. Caldecott. This book was previously in the library of one E.T. May (Christmas ’88), then Henry F. May, Jr (March 27, 1947), and now it’s in mine. On whose bookshelf will it reside next?Quotes:On scholars and the past:“…though a jovial song of the present day was but a foolish sound in the ears of wisdom, and beneath the notice of a learned man, yet a trowl written by a tosspot several hundred years since was a matter worthy of the gravest research, and enough to set whole colleges by the ears.”On transience:“The fair Julia was leaning on her lover’s arm, listening to his conversation, with her eyes cast down, a soft blush on her cheek, and a quiet smile on her lips, while in the hand that hung negligently by her side was a bunch of flowers. In this way they were sauntering slowly along, and when I considered them, and the scene in which they were moving, I could not but think it a thousand pities that the season should ever change, or that young people should ever grow older, or that blossoms should give way to fruit, or that lovers should ever get married.”And this, the most scene in the book:“When I look at these faint records of gallantry and tenderness; when I contemplate the fading portrait of these beautiful girls, and think, too, that they have long since bloomed, reigned, grown old, died, and passed away, and with them all their graces, their triumphs, their rivalries, their admirers; the whole empire of love and pleasure in which they ruled – ‘all dead, all buried, all forgotten,’ I find a cloud of melancholy stealing over the present gaieties around me. I was gazing, in a musing mood, this very morning, at the portrait of the lady whose husband was killed abroad, when the fair Julia entered the gallery, leaning on the arm of the captain. The sun shone through the row of windows on her as she passed along, and she seemed to beam out each time into brightness, and relapse into shade, until the door at the bottom of the gallery closed after her. I felt a sadness of heart at the idea, that this was an emblem of her lot: a few more years of sunshine and shade, and all this life, and loveliness, and enjoyment, will have ceased, and nothing be left to commemorate this beautiful being but one more perishable portrait; to awaken, perhaps, the trite speculations of some future loiterer, like myself, when I and my scribblings shall have lived through our brief existence and been forgotten.”