Record ID:
192824
Accession number:
MA 4718
Credit:
Gift of Irving Bowdoin Kingsford, Jr., 1991.
Description:
1 item (119 p.), bound ; various sizes.
Notes:
With 26 pages of notes and pencil sketches.
Although Irving achieved early fame with his Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809), he abandoned writing for several years to take charge of the family business in Liverpool. In August and September 1817, Irving visited Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. Scott encouraged Irving to return to writing, and two years later he published his most successful work, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which included the stories of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." For his three-volume The Crayon Miscellany in 1835, Irving recalled his 1817 visit to Scott in a sentimental memoir entitled Abbotsford.
Binding:
Red leather, with lock, two keys, and a wine velvet drawstring case.
Provenance:
Irving had no children, and the manuscript passed to his great-niece, Julia Irving Grinnell, who had the manuscript bound in a scrapbook. The volume was passed on to her daughter Edith Grinnell Bowdoin, to her nephew Irving Bowdoin Kingsford, and to his son Irving Kingsford, the great grandson of Julia Irving Grinnell Bowdoin and George S. Bowdoin (a partner of Pierpont Morgan from 1884-1900).
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