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The first plan was for a mere burlesque of an absurd book just published, a Dr. Samuel Mitchill's "Picture of New York." Mitchill began with the aborigines: the Irvings began with the creation of the world. Fortunately Peter was soon called away to Europe, and Irving was left to his own devices, which presently took a different and more original turn.
There lived Mary Fairlie, known to Salmagundi readers as "Sophia Sparkle," and who married Cooper the tragic actor. In the Ann Street house most of the Knickerbocker History of New York was written. Washington Irving and his brother Peter were to write it as an extravagant burlesque on Dr. Samuel Mitchill's Picture of New York, then a very popular and learned work.
In 1809 he had invented a mythical Dutch historian of New York named Diedrich Knickerbocker and fathered upon him a witty parody of Dr. Mitchill's grave "Picture of New York." To read Irving's chapters today is to witness one of the rarest and most agreeable of phenomena, namely, the actual beginning of a legend which the world is unwilling to let die.
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