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In: Mythology, Legends & Folklore·Essays, Letters & Speeches·Travel Writing
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #49947.
Washington Irving’s “The Alhambra” is a hybrid of travelogue, historical sketch, and imaginative tale, assembled from notes taken during his 1829 stay in the Moorish palace and its environs. The opening pages explain that the work blends “rough draughts” of stories and essays with added material, all aimed at portraying the Alhambra’s “half Spanish, half Oriental character” and the legends of its inhabitants. The table of contents reveals a sprawling structure, chapters on the palace’s architecture, its former rulers, local customs, and a series of legends, suggesting a mosaic of narrative fragments that together paint a vivid picture of Granada’s cultural microcosm.
Irving writes in the early‑nineteenth‑century American Romantic style, employing a formal, descriptive prose that interweaves factual observation with lyrical digressions. His voice is that of a cultured traveler, keen on preserving local color while indulging in the era’s fascination with exoticism and chivalric romance. Readers who enjoy richly detailed travel narratives, historic‑fiction hybrids, and the nostalgic charm of early American literature will find this work rewarding.
The opening · free to read
Rough draughts of some of the following tales and essays were actually written during a residence in the Alhambra; others were subsequently added, founded on notes and observations made there. Care was taken to maintain local coloring and verisimilitude; so that the whole might present a faithful and living picture of that microcosm, that singular little world into which I had been fortuitously thrown; and about which the external world had a very imperfect idea. It was my endeavor scrupulously to depict its half Spanish, half Oriental character; its mixture of the heroic, the poetic, and the grotesque; to revive the traces of grace and beauty fast fading from its walls; to record the regal and chivalrous traditions concerning those who once trod its courts; and the whimsical and superstitious legends of the motley race now burrowing among its ruins.
The papers thus roughly sketched out lay for three or four years in my portfolio, until I found myself in London, in 1832, on the eve of returning to the United States. I then endeavored to arrange them for the press, but the preparations for departure did not allow sufficient leisure. Several were thrown aside as incomplete; the rest were put together somewhat hastily and in rather a crude and chaotic manner.
In the present edition I have revised and rearranged the whole work, enlarged some parts, and added others, including the papers originally omitted; and have thus endeavored to render it more complete and more worthy of the indulgent reception with which it has been favored.
W. I.
SUNNYSIDE 1851.
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