Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and the mysterious adventure of 'Rip Van Winkle' are just two famous tales included in this new collection of Washington Irving's quirky, charming and sometimes unnerving tales

Macabre horror, fish-out-of-water humour...A heady gumbo of witchcraft, apocalyptic prophecies and occult rivalries

Irving was befriended by Sir Walter Scott, admired by Lord Byron and widely considered the first American writer who could hold his own with England's best

Beautifully composed of dense texture and dark pleasures

Irving is at his best...the inventor of the modern short story... The remote valleys and mountain glens, where strange contagions seem to hang in the air and ghosts and goblins dwell, seem as real to us today as they must have done centuries ago

'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' is...a classic, essential, exquisitely American tale

Washington Irving was born 3 April 1783 in New York. He trained as lawyer before deciding to pursue a literary career and, with his brother, producing a series of satirical essays and poems. Irving wrote under pseudonyms at first: ‘Diedrich Knickerbocker’ for ‘A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty’, and ‘Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.’ for ‘Sketch Book’. The latter included pieces inspired by his travels to London during his unsuccessful efforts to save the family business from bankruptcy, and Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, for which he became famous. Irving worked in Spain as a diplomatic attaché, where he wrote ‘Legends of the Alhambra’ in 1832, and London as secretary to the US legation. His final work was a vast biography of George Washington published in 1855. He died on 28 November 1859.

There is a sequestered glen off the east coast of the Hudson, New York state, which has long continued under the sway of some witching power; the neighbourhood abounds with tales, haunted spots and twilight superstitions. But as hapless schoolmaster Ichabod Crane will discover, the wildest of all stories in this region of shadows relate to one particularly dreadful spectre - the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. 
 
Washington Irving's comic horror story is the best known of this collection of stories, observations and sketches written on his travels around Britain and America in the eighteenth century. Also includes 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'Little Britain'.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

Washington Irving (1783-1859), one of America's first successful professional writers, was born and raised in New York City. He also spent time in London and served as a diplomatic attaché in Spain. Best known today for his tales, he was equally famous in life for his sketches of European life and his biographies of historical figures. 
 
Elizabeth Bradley is the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Irving's A History of New York (2008).

In Irving's great work, The Sketch Book, fictional historian Diedrich Knickerbocker introduces us to Rip van Winkle, the Dutch colonist who slept through the Revolutionary War; Ichabod Crane, the superstitious, social-climbing schoolmaster; and the pumpkin-topped Headless Horseman, ancestor to countless horror film antiheroes. In addition to 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and 'Rip Van Winkle', The Sketch Book touches on cultural and historical concerns that remain compelling, thanks to Irving's modern outlook and impressive foresight. 
 
This new edition, with an introduction from Elizabeth L. Bradley, demonstrates how inextricably Irving's writings are woven into the fabric of American culture - high and low.

The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (based on Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky, and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer, Baltus Van Tassel. As Crane leaves a party he attended at the Van Tassel home on an autumn night, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, who is supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head".

Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was born in New York City, the  youngest of 11 children. He became an author, essayist, poet, travel writer,  biographer, and columnist and is renowned as the father of the American short  story. He is best known for 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' and 'Rip Van Winkle,'  both of which appear in this collection. One of his greatest biographies  includes The Life of George Washington (1855-59).

The legendary enchantment of Rip Van Winkle in the Kaatskill Mountains; the gruesome end of Ichabod Crane, who met the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow; the spectre bridegroom who turned out to be happily substantial; the pride of an English village and the come-uppance of the over-zealous Mountjoy - these witty, perceptive and captivating tales range from fantasy to romance.

Washington Irving

I'm not myself - I'm somebody else - that's me yonder - no - that's somebody else got into my shoes...I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!

Washington Irving

Books by Washington Irving

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