Memoir of John Murray
Washington Irving to John Murray, 31 October 1820
Paris, October 31st, 1820.
My dear Sir,
I have just received your letter of the 26th, which has
almost overpowered me with the encomiums it contains. I am astonished at the
success of my writings in England,
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and can hardly persuade myself that it is not all a
dream. Had any one told me a few years since in America that anything I could
write would interest such men as Gifford
and Byron, I should as readily have believed
a fairy tale. If Mr. Gifford will be so good as to suggest
what parts of ‘Knickerbocker’ might be curtailed with advantage, I shall
endeavour to modify the work accordingly. I am sensible that it is full of
faults, and would almost require re-writing to make it what it should be. But I
find it very difficult to touch it now—it is so stale with me.
William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published
The Baviad (1794),
The Maeviad
(1795), and
The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the
Quarterly Review (1809-24).
James Kirke Paulding (1778-1860)
American writer and associate of Washington Irving; he was a member of the Board of Navy
Commissioners (1815-23) and later secretary of the Navy (1838-41).
