[1][2][3] The work was the most popular treatment of Columbus in the English-speaking world until the publication of Samuel Eliot Morison's biography Admiral of the Ocean Sea in 1942.

[1] Literary critics have noted that Irving "saw American history as a useful means of establishing patriotism in his readers, and while his language tended to be more general, his avowed intention toward Columbus was thoroughly nationalist".

[4] From Irving's preface to the work, however, a contradictory intent emerges, that of the desire to write an accurate history: "In the execution of this work I have avoided indulging in mere speculations or general reflections, excepting such as rose naturally out of the subject, preferring to give a minute and circumstantial narrative, omitting no particular that appeared characteristic of the persons, the events, or the times; and endeavoring to place every fact in such a point of view, that the reader might perceive its merits, and draw his own maxims and conclusions" (I, 12-13).

"[6] One glaring weakness, then, of the work as a historical biography, is perpetuating the myth that it was only the voyages of Columbus that finally convinced Europeans of his time that the Earth is not flat.

From the perspective of constructivist literary critique: "Most of the critics who react this way, however, attack the work with counterevidence that is already present in Irving's text.