The Project Gutenberg EBook of Knickerbocker's History of New York,
Complete, by Washington Irving

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Title: Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete

Author: Washington Irving

Release Date: July 29, 2004 [EBook #13042]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF NEW YORK ***

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[Transcriber's note: The spelling irregularities of the original have
been retained in this etext.]

KNICKERBOCKER'S HISTORY OF NEW YORK

COMPLETE

BY

WASHINGTON IRVING

CHICAGO

W.B. CONKEY COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

INTRODUCTION.

KNICKERBOCKER'S HISTORY OF NEW YORK is the book, published in December,
1809, with which Washington living, at the age of twenty-six, first won
wide credit and influence. Walter Scott wrote to an American friend, who
sent him the second edition----

"I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of
entertainment which I have received from the most excellently
jocose History of New York. I am sensible that, as a stranger to
American parties and politics, I must lose much of the concealed
satire of the piece, but I must own that, looking at the simple
and obvious meaning only, I have never read anything so closely
resembling the style of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich
Knickerbocker. I have been employed these few evenings in reading
them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies who are our guests, and our
sides have been absolutely sore with laughing. I think, too,
there are passages which indicate that the author possesses
powers of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me
much of Sterne."

Washington Irving was the son of William Irving, a sturdy native of the
Orkneys, allied to the Irvines of Drum, among whose kindred was an old
historiographer who said to them, "Some of the foolish write themselves
Irving." William Irving of Shapinsha, in the Orkney Islands, was a petty
officer on board an armed packet ship in His Majesty's service, when he
met with his fate at Falmouth in Sarah Sanders, whom he married at
Falmouth in May, 176