A History of New York
A History of New York is a satire disguised as a work of history that the American writer Washington Irving published in 1809 under the pseudonym Dietrich Knickerbocker . The full title of the work is A history of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty. Containing, among many surprising and curious matters, the unutterable ponderings of Walter the Doubter, the disastrous projects of William the Testy, and the chivalric achievements of Peter the Headstrong, the three Dutch governors of New Amsterdam: being the only authentic history of the times that ever hath been published .
A German translation was published in 1829 under the title Humorous History of the City of New York, From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, which, among many astonishing and strange things, deals with the inexpressible considerations of Walter des Doubters, the projects of Wilhelm, which were haunted by the evil one of the stubborn, and the chivalrous deeds of Peter the Obstinate, the three Dutch governors of New Amsterdam: as the only authentic history of these times that has ever been or will be brought to light .
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In it, Irving paints an unflattering picture of the settlers of the colony Nieuw Nederland , from which Irving's home state New York emerged . The Dutch are portrayed as stubborn, lazy, pipe-smoking, low-minded shield citizens, which at the time brought Irving to the anger of New Yorkers of Dutch origin. If the work reads itself ostensibly as crude burlesque, then on another level it is at the same time a biting satire on the political leadership of the United States during Irving's lifetime. The figure of the incompetent governor Wilhelmus Kieft is a mocking portrait of Thomas Jefferson .
The history of New York appears to be framed by a double editorial fiction : A "message about the author", a description of Dietrich Knickerbockers from the hand of his alleged editor, is followed by a foreword by the alleged author Knickerbocker "To the audience." Knickerbocker explains the aim and purpose of his work: In order to bring the “many great and wonderful deeds of our Dutch ancestors the fair tribute of post-fame,” he undertook in the present work to describe the history of the first years of his hometown, like Xenophon “with the utmost impartiality and strict observance of truthfulness. ”The actual work is divided into seven books, each with five to ten chapters, in which he describes the fate of New York“ from the beginning of the world ”up to the conquest of the colony by the English in 1667.
Origin and work context
The History of the City of New York is Washington Irving's first independent work. He began his career as a writer in 1802 with alleged letters to the editor, drawn with the pseudonym Jonathan Oldystyle in the Morning Chronicle , a daily newspaper published by his brother Peter Irving . 1807-08 he was together with another brother, William Irving , and his brother-in-law James Kirke Paulding in the 20 issues of the magazine Salmagundi, the cultural and political goings-on, especially in the upper classes of New York. In a sense, history appears as a continuation of Salmagundi ; In one of the later numbers Irving had turned from the present to the history of the city and reprinted a humorous episode as a true story allegedly taken from the annals of the city ( Of the Chronicles of the Renowned and Antient City of Gotham ). He established as the genre of ridicule epic ( mock-heroic epic of) that the seal of the English neo-classicism with works such as Samuel Butler's Hudibras , Jonathan Swift's The Tale of the Tub , John Dryden MacFlecknoe and Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock one over Century dominated. Unlike these works, the pseudo-historical reports in Salmagundi , like the history, are in prose.
The first plans for the History of New York go back to 1808, a few months after the last issue of the Salmagundi was published. Again, it was originally planned as a family collaboration: Washington Irving wrote the first drafts together with his older brother Peter Irving , who, however, embarked for Europe in the fall of that year to take over the management of the local branch of the Irving trading company; he was not to return to New York until 1832.
The original intention of the brothers was to write a parody of a recently published volume by Samuel Latham Mitchill . Mitchill enjoyed a good reputation as a polymath in New York and delighted the city with numerous and lengthy lectures on subjects as diverse as ichthyology, earthquakes, literature and medicine. In 1807 this well-traveled polyhistor published a volume entitled The Picture of New York; or The Traveller's Guide through the commercial metropolis of the United States. This travel guide, divided into thematic chapters (history, topography, health, economy, etc.) made New York seem like paradise. To the Irving brothers, on the other hand, who knew the metropolises of Europe firsthand, this exaggeration of the still quite manageable New York - around 1800 a city with hardly more than 60,000 inhabitants - seemed quite presumptuous. The Irvings' parody should actually follow the thematic structure of the model, but after his brother's departure, Washington Irving decided instead to use the introductory chapter of history to a comprehensive pseudo-chronicle of the city of New York "from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty" spin out. The reason for this may be that it was during his research that he first developed a genuine interest in learned scriptures.
While working on the history , Matilda Hoffman died in April 1808 after a short, serious illness to which Irving had lost his heart. This stroke of fate, often described in a highly sentimental way by his later biographers, was to lastingly darken his mind; however, it gave the work on the history a sudden boost. In the next weeks and months he wrote all the more diligently on his work in order to suppress the painful thought of his lost love. Sometimes he retired to the country for weeks to write, while in town he spent most of his time between dusty old books in the library of the New York Historical Society .
The history was an immediate sales success: after just one year, Irving's royalties were $ 2,000. In New York in particular, the work divided people's minds: many of the descendants of the Dutch settlers felt their honor had been hurt. There is a myth that a dreaded hag from Albany went to Manhattan to personally spank Irving with her horse whip.
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Contemporary editions
- A History of New York… . Inskeep & Bradford, Philadelphia 1809. (first edition)
- A History of New York… . Inskeep & Bradford, Philadelphia 1812. (1st revised edition; digitized from the Internet Archive)
- A History of New York… Volume I of The Works of Washington Irving. New Edition, Revised George P. Putnam ( Author's Revised Edition ); Digitized at Google Book Search .
Modern editions
- Stanley T. Williams and Tremaine McDowell (Eds.): A History of New York . Yale University Press, New Haven 1927.
- Michael L. Black and Nancy B. Black (Eds.): A History of New York… . Twayne, Boston 1984 (= Volume 7 by Henry A. Pochmann , Herbert L. Kleinfield, Richard D. Rust (Eds.): The Complete Works of Washington Irving . 30 volumes. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison / Twayne, Boston 1969– 1986).
- Elizabeth L. Bradley (Ed.): A History of New York . Penguin, London and New York 2008.
Translations
- Humorous history of the city of New York… Verlag Johann David Sauerländer, Frankfurt am Main 1829. Digitized
Secondary literature
- Ralph M. Aderman: Critical Essays on Washington Irving. Hall, Boston 1990. ISBN 0-8161-8896-3 .
- Peter Antelyes: Tales of Adventurous Enterprise. Washington Irving and the Poetics of Western Expansion. New York et al. a .: Columbia Univ. Pr., New York 1990. ISBN 0-231-06860-3 .
- Helmbrecht Breinig: Irving's short prose, art and art problems in narrative and essayistic work. European university publications. Row 14, Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature. Vol. 6. Herbert Lang, Bern 1972. ISBN 3-261-00789-3 .
- Robert A. Ferguson, "Hunting Down a Nation": Irving's A History of New York. In: James W. Tuttleton (ed.): Washington Irving: The Critical Reaction. AMS Press 1993. (First published in: Nineteenth-Century Fiction 36: 1, June 1981. pp. 22–46.)
- Jeffrey Insko: Diedrich Knickerbocker, Regular Bred Historian. In: Early American Literature 43: 3, 2008. pp. 605-641.
- Jerome McGann: Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History . In: Early American Literature 47: 2, 2012, pp. 349-76.
- Andrew B. Myers (Ed.): A Century of Commentary on the Works of Washington Irving. 1860-1974. Sleepy Hollow Restorations, Tarrytown NY 1976. ISBN 0-912882-28-X .
- Martin Roth: Comedy and America. The Lost World of Washington Irving. Kennikat Press, Port Washington NY 1976. ISBN 0-8046-9132-0 .
- Stanley T. Williams : The Life of Washington Irving. 2 volumes. Oxford University Press, New York 1935.