Location of this previously unrecorded item may help to solve one of
the minor mysteries of the Irving bibliography. Stanley T. Williams and
Mary Ellen Edge, in A Bibliography of the Writings of Washington
Irving (1936, p. 165), include the following hypothetical entry under
"Periodicals and Collections":
*Godey's lady's book. New York [etc.] 1830-98.
Irving is sometimes mentioned as a contributor to Godey's lady's
book, but no contributions by him have been identified.
An earlier bibliography, that of Langfield and Blackburn,[1] makes no mention of any
contribution to
Godey's.
Irving did, however, contribute a brief item to at least one lady's
book — an item which seems, up to this time, to have escaped the
notice
of Irving bibliographers. In The Ladies' Repository for
February, 1852, a sketch entitled "Our Changing Sky and Climate" appears
under Irving's byline. The text, sufficiently brief to be given entire, is as
follows.
