“I have,” confided Washington Irving to his friend and effective literary agent Henry Brevoort, “by patient & persevering labour of my most uncertain pen, & by catching the gleams of sunshine in my cloudy mind, managed to open to myself an avenue to 〈a〉 some degree of profit & reputation.” The “avenue” in question was The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. – America's first internationally acclaimed work of literature – which, by March 1821, had become a direct route to respectability and the British establishment, opening to Irving the world of stately homes and their real-life avenues, previously only glimpsed from afar. Pieced together after the collapse of his family business, the collection of sketches may have been a carefully engineered career move, but Irving avoided any suggestion of personal cost in catching only those “gleams of sunshine,” and apparently censoring his cloudier, less amenable self. He continued: “I value it the more highly because it is entirely independent and self created; and I must use my best endeavours to turn it to account” (LI.614). In the context, “independent” – a charged word for his generation – is striking, given that The Sketch Book was anything but.