¹ Richards, T. A., “Sunnyside, the Home of Washington Irving,” Harper's, 14 (1856), 2–3.1.Google Scholar

² Homes of American Authors (New York, 1853), ivGoogle Scholar. The other authors whose homes are described include William Cullen Bryant, George Bancroft, Richard Dana, William Prescott, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Edward Everett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Gilmore Simms, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Daniel Webster, John Pendleton Kennedy, and James Russell Lowell. Homes, which purported to discuss the residences of American authors, was quite selective as to what region and gender constituted “America.” Only one woman was included and only two authors, Simms and Kennedy, lived outside the northeast.

³ Sears, John discusses the popularity of the Hudson Valley as a tourist destination in Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁴ Zboray, Ronald J., “Antebellum Reading and the Ironies of Technological Innovation,” American Quarterly 40 (03 1988), 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gilmore, Michael T., American Romanticism and the Marketplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 379Google Scholar. See also Leverenz, David, Manhood and the American Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 73–106Google Scholar.

⁶ Douglas, , Feminization of American Culture, 379Google Scholar; Leverenz, , Manhood and the American Renaissance, 73–106Google Scholar.

⁷ Letter to Anne and Harriet Thackeray, 4 12 1855, The Letters of William Makepeace Thackeray, Roy, Gordon N. ed., vol. 3 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), 511Google Scholar.

⁸ Downing, (New York: Dover Publications, 1991), Treatise, 353Google Scholar.

⁹ Irving to Dickens, 25 05 1841, Letters of Washington Irving (Boston: Twayne, 1982), vol. 3, 107Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Irving, , “Abbotsford,” in The Crayon Miscellany: The Complete Works of Washington Irving (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979), 125, 144Google Scholar.

¹¹ Irving to Peter Irving, 24 11 1835, Letters, vol. 3, 846Google Scholar.

¹² Cater, Harold Dean, Washington Irving at Sunnyside (Tarrytown: Sleepy Hollow Press, 1957), 13–25Google Scholar.

¹³ Willis, , The Convalescent (New York, 1859), 122Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Irving, , “John Bull,” The Sketch Book (New York: Signet Classic, 1961), 303–4Google Scholar.

¹⁵ For an excellent discussion of Irving's imaginative strategies at Sunnyside see Clyde, Debra Lynne, “Crayonesque Aesthetics in Prose and Architecture: A Chapter in the Formation of American Culture,” 142–88 (dissertation, Drew University, 1986)Google Scholar. Her thinking on the subject has greatly influenced my own.

¹⁶ The Sketch Book, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” 330–1.

¹⁷ “Wolfert's Roost,” in Wolfert's Roost, The Complete Works of Washington Irving, vol. XXVII (Boston: Twayne, 1979), 12Google Scholar. For an account of the publishing history of “Wolfert's Roost” and the substantive changes between the two versions see Robert Rosenberg's introduction to the above-named volume.

¹⁸ Willis, , The Convalescent, 138, 134Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Willis's only biography is Beers, Henry A., Nathaniel Parker Willis (Boston, 1885)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Willis was determined that readers view his writings as light fare written with a speed to match its irreverence. The titles of his essay collections reflect this approach: Hurry Graphs, Out-Doors at Idlewild, Fun Jottings, and The Rag-Bag: A Collection of Ephemera.

²¹ Willis's friends publicly stated that he had tuberculosis and his only biographer concurs. Recent scholars, however, suggest that Willis was epileptic and he disguised the true nature of his illness to avoid the embarrassment and disgust which many nineteenth-century Americans expressed towards epileptics. In light of Willis's strenuous exertions in landscaping and architecture, it seems plausible that he did not suffer from a respiratory illness such as tuberculosis. See Brydins Adams, “The Home of N. P. Willis,” Willis Collection, Cornwall-on-Hudson Public Library, Box 1, Folder 3.

²² Adams, “The Home of N. P. Willis,” 4; Beers, , Nathaniel Parker Willis, 321Google Scholar.

²³ Vaux, Calvert, Villages and Cottages (1857; New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 263Google Scholar.

²⁴ Vaux, 259–64. Despite his comments about medieval knights Vaux tried to dispel any notion that he endorsed middle-ages feudalism. “The day for castles … has never yet dawned in America; and as its arrival must necessarily be accompanied by a return of feudalism in some form or other, any wish for the advent of such a day should be at once rejected by even the most art-loving republican.” Castles, and presumably Willis's villa, appealed to the “sense of beauty of outline and color and a picturesqueness.” Villas and Cottages, 262.

²⁵ Richards, T. A., “Idlewild, the home of N. P. Willis,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 16 (01 1858), 146, 150Google Scholar.

²⁶ Irving, , Letters, vol. 4, 496Google Scholar.

²⁷ Willis, , Out-Doors at Idlewild, 68–70Google Scholar.

²⁸ Willis, , Out-Doors at Idlewild, 67Google Scholar.

²⁹ Adams, “Idlewild,” 6–8.

³⁰ Mitchell was succeeded in “The Editor's Easy Chair” by George Curtis and William Dean Howells, both of whom continued the chatty tone which he had developed for the column.

³¹ Mitchell, , My Farm at Edgewood (New York, 1864), 66Google Scholar.

³² A complete bibliography of Mitchell's articles, correspondence, and books appears in Dunn's The Life of Donald G. Mitchell, 395–408.

³³ Kimball, Arthur Read, “The Master of Edgewood,” Scribner's, 27 (02 1900), 186Google Scholar.

³⁴ Mitchell, , Reveries of a Bachelor (Boston: Bobbs Merrill, 1906), 327–30Google Scholar.

³⁵ Mitchell, , Reveries of a Bachelor, 327–30Google Scholar.

³⁶ Mitchell, , My Farm at Edgewood, 2, 51Google Scholar.

³⁷ Kimball, 186.

³⁸ Mitchell, , My Farm at Edgewood, 85–90Google Scholar.

³⁹ Willis, , Rural Letters (New York, 1849), 176Google Scholar.