Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent.
Early American Comic Essays on Fashion, Theater, and Urban Society in New YorkBy Washington Irving
Length1h 47m
About this audiobook
Published in 1802–03 under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent., this series of satirical newspaper letters marks Washington Irving's literary debut. Through the supposedly elderly, conservative observer Oldstyle, Irving examines New York's theater, manners, fashions, literary pretensions, and shifting social values. The work draws upon the periodical essay and familiar-letter traditions while adapting them to the emerging culture of the American press. Its humor depends on irony, exaggerated propriety, and the contrast between Oldstyle's antiquated judgments and the modern world he unwittingly records. Although slight in scale, the collection is significant as an early experiment in American literary voice and urban social criticism, anticipating Irving's later command of persona, satire, and cultural observation. Washington Irving (1783–1859) began publishing while still a young New Yorker, contributing to the lively political and literary journalism of the early republic. Writing amid debates over national identity, imported culture, public taste, and the legitimacy of American letters, he used Oldstyle to test how an invented conservative personality could mediate contemporary experience. The pseudonym also afforded him comic distance, allowing criticism of local institutions and fashionable behavior without adopting the solemnity of formal polemic. This early work reveals an author learning to transform ephemeral journalism into distinctive literary entertainment. Readers interested in Irving's development, early American periodicals, or the history of literary satire will find this collection especially rewarding. Its compact letters offer an accessible portrait of the cultural life of the young United States while displaying the wit and narrative impersonation that would define Irving's mature writing. The book is best read not merely as juvenilia, but as an important document of American literary self-fashioning and a lively introduction to one of the nation's foundational prose stylists.
Audiobook details
GenreLiterary Classics
Length1 hr 47 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJun 6, 2015
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Tatler (Vol. 1-4) (Annotated)
7LETTER IV
2Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. - Nine Humorous Essays on the Fashions of the Time and the New York Theater Scene (Unabridged)
8LETTER V
3BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
9LETTER VI
4LETTER I
10LETTER VII
5LETTER II
11LETTER VIII
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6LETTER III
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