About the book: 2015 / Washington Irving is the first American writer who gained worldwide fame and won young American literature the “right of citizenship” in the minds of the experienced and discerning European reader, “the first ambassador of the New World to the Old,” in the words of W. Thackeray. Irving was the pioneer of themes that later became central to American literature; he was the first to develop the short story, a favorite genre of American writers, and created a prose style that was considered exemplary for several generations. In the short stories, Irving appears as a true romantic. The first romantic to emerge from American literature.