Washington Irving wrote the first bestseller about Astoria without ever going there
Photo: Engraved by Hatch & Smillie. Printed by C. R. Leslie R. , public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
By the 1830s Washington Irving was one of the most famous writers in the United States, known for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. He was also a friend of John Jacob Astor, and Astor wanted the story of his failed Pacific venture told well.
Astor gave Irving access to the Pacific Fur Company’s papers, letters and journals, and Irving’s nephew Pierre helped organize the research. The result was Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains, published in 1836.
What the book covers
Irving told the story of the two expeditions Astor sent west in 1810: the ship Tonquin, which carried the founding party around Cape Horn to the Columbia, and the overland party under Wilson Price Hunt, which nearly starved crossing the Snake River country. He described the building of Fort Astoria, the destruction of the Tonquin and the sale of the post to the British in 1813.
The book was popular and went through many editions. Critics then and since have pointed out that it flatters Astor, and Irving never went to the Pacific Northwest himself. Still, for many American readers it was their first detailed picture of the Columbia River country, published just as interest in Oregon was growing and a few years before the first large wagon trains.
Why it still matters here
Historians of the region still use Astoria alongside the original journals it drew on. In the city named for the venture, the book is part of the founding story, and copies are a staple in local bookstores. Irving died in 1859 at his home, Sunnyside, on the Hudson River.
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