Washington Irving was born in New York City in the year the American Revolution ended, the youngest of eleven children, and named after George Washington. He trained as a lawyer but preferred to write, and first became known for a comic history of New York by an invented Dutch historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker.

In England, after his family's business failed, he wrote The Sketch Book (1819–1820), which held both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and made him the first American writer famous in Europe. He later served as American minister to Spain, and died at his home on the Hudson.