The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

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The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. On German appeared as The sketchbook is a collection published 1819-20 of short prose works - sketches , or " sketches " - the American writer Washington Irving . The sketchbook is of particular importance for the history of literature , as it contains three stories, Rip Van Winkle , the saga of the sleepy gorge and The Ghost Groom , which are generally considered to be the first short stories in American literature .

publication

Title page of the first number of the Sketch Book , published in New York in 1819

Irving wrote the sketchbook in England from 1818 to 1819 . In 1815 he had come to Liverpool to assist his brother in running the English branch of the Irving family business, but could not avert the decline and eventual bankruptcy of the company in 1818. After these sobering years, Irving found himself on his own in a foreign country and made the decision to make literature a livelihood. The texts of the Sketch Book first appeared in America over a period of around one and a half years in seven individual issues, each with three or four sketches per number. Collected in book form, they were published in two volumes in 1820, first in London by Murray’s , probably the most renowned English literary publisher of the time, and only shortly afterwards in New York ; Irving wanted to minimize losses from English pirated prints .

In 1848 Irving revised the sketchbook for a new edition by his publisher George Palmer Putnam , in particular changed the order of the sketches and expanded the book to include two new essays , A Sunday in London and London Antiques. Most modern editions of the sketchbook are based on this Author's Revised Edition .

expenditure

The authoritative modern edition is:

  • Washington Irving: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Edited by Haskell Springer. Twayne, Boston 1978. (= Volume 8 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.)
Digital copies

Translations

Print editions in German

  • Washington Irving's sketchbook. Translated by Karl Theodor Gaedertz . Philipp Reclam, Leipzig 1877 a. ö. (1926)
    • Washington Irving. Sketchbook. By Karl Brunner through. Übers. (After Gaedertz), Series British-American Library, 2. Dept .: Translations, 1.- Austrian Publishing House for Fiction and Science ÖVBW, Linz 1947. With biography and notes by the publisher.
    • Washington Irving, The Sketchbook. Transcribed using older translations and provided with an afterword by Siegfried Schmitz. Die Fundgrube series, 35. Winkler, Munich 1968

Secondary literature

  • Jane D. Eberwein: Transatlantic Contrasts in Irving's Sketch Book . In: College Literature 15: 2, 1988. pp. 153-70.
  • Simone Hagenmeyer: Washington Irving and the periodical essay of the 18th century. The Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Salmagundi and The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon as deviating answers to British writing habits. Cuvillier, Göttingen 2000. ISBN 3-89712-997-3
  • Matthew Pethers: Transatlantic Migration and the Politics of the Picturesque in Washington Irving's Sketch Book . In: Symbiosis 9: 2, 2005. pp. 135-58.
  • Henry A. Pochmann: Irving's German Sources in "The Sketch Book" . In: Studies in Philology 27: 3, 1930. pp. 477-507.
  • Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky: Washington Irving: Sketches of Anxiety . In: American Literature 58: 4, 1986, pp. 499-522.
  • Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky: The Value of Storytelling: “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in the Context of “The Sketch Book” . In: Modern Philology 82: 4, 1985, pp. 393-406.
  • Mary Ann Snyder-Korber: Building the Better Book: Conversation, Complication, and the Constitution of the Medium in The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. In: Frank Kelleter and Daniel Stein (Eds.): American Studies as Media Studies. Winter, Heidelberg 2008. pp. 27-37.