Knickerbocker's History and the "Enlightened" Men of New York City

Abstract

v[ORE THAN JUST THE SATIRE of national politics now assumed, LVJL Knickerbocker's History contains a multitude of satiric shafts aimed at well known New York City individuals and institutions. It is, above all, a book written with the hometown audience in mind. De Witt Clinton probably recognized this. In his An Account of Abimelech Coody and Other Celebrated Writers of New-York, he describes Irving's work: History of New-York by Knickerbocker, independently of its broad humour, is really intolerable. The heterogenous and unnatural combination of fiction and history is perfectly disgusting to good taste.' This, with its intolerable and disgusting, is harsh criticism of a book we have come to think of as gently humorous. But Clinton was leader of the city's literati, men of the Enlightenment who were the founders of the New-York Historical Society and the Literary and Philosophical Society, and they were being challenged by a younger group of writers. This group was led by Verplanck, with Irving as editor of the Analectic Magazine: they formed a newer literary school, one that laughed at the excessive erudition and nit-picking concerns of the older group. This younger circle was anti-intellectual and pragmatic. Irving's History ridiculed all that the literati held dear-and it mocked the way New York City was governed at a time when Clinton was mayor. This satire of the older men of the Enlightenment wlho ruled the city and dominated society is found throughout Knickerbocker's History, but can conveniently be discussed under four headings: The Picture of New-York, which furnished the original inspiration; the activities of the New-York Historical Society; Irving's picture of an enlightened, philosophic ruler; and the satire of city politics.