The household history of the United States and its people, for young Americans . - in this country, so he was thefirst writer in the field of general literature. His writ-ings are full of acute thought on practical themes, andsuited to the genius of a busy people engrossed withtheir outward affairs. But the good beginning made by Franklin and others Jefferson, Hami! . • 1 1 1 r ton, and Madison toward an American literature received a check from theexcitements which preceded the Revolution and the dis-cussions which followed the establishment of a new na-tion. As in the seventeenth century the
The household history of the United States and its people, for young Americans . - in this country, so he was thefirst writer in the field of general literature. His writ-ings are full of acute thought on practical themes, andsuited to the genius of a busy people engrossed withtheir outward affairs. But the good beginning made by Franklin and others Jefferson, Hami! . • 1 1 1 r ton, and Madison toward an American literature received a check from theexcitements which preceded the Revolution and the dis-cussions which followed the establishment of a new na-tion. As in the seventeenth century the best minds inAmerica were engrossed by religious debates, in the lasthalf of the eighteenth they were chiefly occupied with 26 384 HISTORY OF THE UNITED WASHINGTON IRVING. questions of state. Besides the practical writ-ings of Franklin and the theological specula-tions of the great New England divine, Jona-than Edwards, almost the only works of per-manent value produced during the first twocenturies after settlements in the presentUnited States began are the writings oiJefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, onpolitical subjects. Washington Irving, who is sometimescalled the father of American literature,was born in New York in 1783. His first im-portant work was a burlesque, called Knick-erbockers History of New York, in which hemakes much sport of the quaint customs of the Dutchfounders of the colony of New Netherland. The bookis full of drollery, and won praise for its author on both sides of the Atlantic,mous work is the Sketch-Book, in which appear thecharming tales of RipVan Winkle and TheLegend oi Sleepy Life of Washingtonis still a standard biog-raphy, and his other worksare among the most pleasingof American productionsb
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