Volume 51, Number 17 · November 4, 2004
Start Spreading the News
By Benjamin Moser
Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture
by Annette Stott
Overlook/Ambo Anthos, 320 pp., $37.95
The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
by Russell Shorto
Doubleday, 384 pp., $27.50
In 1809, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty appeared under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, an eccentric, learned gentleman determined 'to rescue from oblivion the memory of former incidents, and to render a just tribute of renown to the many great and wonderful transactions of our Dutch progenitors.' The real author was a twenty-six-year-old Manhattan lawyer named Washington Irving; and his comic novel turned him into the first internationally acclaimed American writer, attracting admirers as distinguished as Coleridge and Dickens. Walter Scott reported that his sides were 'absolutely sore with laughter.'[1]
Review, 3798 words
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