Publisher's Synopsis
"The men who founded New York were among the foremost traders of their time; but who has loved liberty with a more passionate devotion than they, and where does the genius of man interpret the soul of man with more commanding and searching power than on the walls of the galleries of The Hague, of Haarlem, and of Amsterdam? In this city, in the year 1809, American literature was born. Books had been written in the Colonies, and later in the States, before 'Knickerbocker's History of New York' appeared; but these earlier books were historical, religious, or polemical treatises; they were contributions to causes; Irving wrote as birds sing and flowers bloom; because man was made to live, not by work alone, but by the free expresion of all the interests of his spirit. Two elements in Irving's work are significant for the present purpose; he was the earliest interpreter of the Old World to the New; he, more than any other t he pioneers of American literature, reknit the sundered peoples by bringing back, with all the charm of tender sentiment and gentle humor, the ripeness and beauty of the old home. 'There are no real breaks in history. This is a new country, but we are an old race; we brought the old world with us in our memories or we should have been poor indeed." -New Outlook
