Books with title Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Sketches

Here are two favorite stories by “the father of American literature” exactly as Washington Irving wrote them, newly reset in easy-to-read type, with six handsome new illustrations. Once again in these pages, Ichabod Crane, the hapless schoolmaster of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, faces the terror of the Headless Horseman; and the henpecked husband of Rip van Winkle rises from a 20-year sleep to find a world vastly changed. Children and adults alike will enjoy the humor and suspense of these two beloved classics of American literature.

These 2 stories from the pen of one of America's earliest and most popular writers draw upon the myths and legends of local and European folklore to create memorable, richly American tales and characters. In the title story, Rip Van Winkle wanders into the Catskill Mountains before the Revolutionary War. When he helps a dwarf carry a heavy keg to a ninepins game, it seems natural to drink the strange, small men's brew - but he hasn't the head for it, and wakes up 20 years later! In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the gawky schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, and his rival Brom Bones, both court beautiful Katrina Van Tassel - until a Headless Horseman makes a ghostly ride.

Washington Irving's two most famous stories are combined here. One tells of Rip Van Winkle who escaped the dreadful life of a hen-pecked husband by magical means and the other of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman on their midnight ride. Experience the fright of poor Ichabod when assailed by the headless horseman and laugh at poor Rip who spends a lot of time sleeping to try to escape the headache of a nagging and ungrateful wife. Washington Irving (1783-1859) was an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, magazine editor and diplomat. Born in Manhattan at the end of the American Revolution, he was named for George Washington, whom he met as a child of six. As a teenager, Irving lived further upstate and became familiar with the surroundings that provided the setting for his best known works, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Don’t lose your head!The Headless Horseman faces off with Ichabod Crane in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," a ghost story of enduring popularity that takes place at the time of the American Revolution. "Rip Van Winkle," another traditional favorite from the same historic period, tells the tale of man who fell asleep for twenty years and found his small town in the Catskill Mountains much changed by the time he awakened. Both are included—along with many other tales—in this classic collection by Washington Irving.

Here are two favorite stories by “the father of American literature” exactly as Washington Irving wrote them, newly reset in easy-to-read type, with six handsome new illustrations. Once again in these pages, Ichabod Crane, the hapless schoolmaster of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, faces the terror of the Headless Horseman; and the henpecked husband of Rip van Winkle rises from a 20-year sleep to find a world vastly changed. Children and adults alike will enjoy the humor and suspense of these two beloved classics of American literature.

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, 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. As Crane leaves a party, 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 WinkleThe story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. In a pleasant village, at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains, lives the kindly Rip Van Winkle, a colonial British-American villager.Go BompaCrazy!After a failed business venture with his brothers, Irving filed for bankruptcy in 1818. Despondent, he turned to writing for possible financial support, though he had difficulty thinking of stories to write. He stayed in Birmingham, England with his brother-in-law Henry Van Wart. The two were reminiscing in June 1818 when Irving was suddenly inspired by their nostalgic conversation. Irving locked himself in his room and wrote non-stop all night. As he said, he felt like a man waking from a long sleep. He presented the first draft of "Rip Van Winkle" to the Van Wart family over breakfast.The Legend of Sleepy HollowThe story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (historical Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and the haunting atmosphere that pervades the imaginations of its inhabitants and visitors.Irving, while he was an aide-de-camp to New York Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins, met an army captain named Ichabod Crane in Sackets Harbor, New York during an inspection tour of fortifications in 1814. He may have patterned the character in "The Legend" after Jesse Merwin, who taught at the local schoolhouse in Kinderhook, further north along the Hudson River, where Irving spent several months in 1809.The story was the longest one published as part of The Sketch Book, which Irving issued using the pseudonym "Geoffrey Crayon" in 1820. Alongside "Rip Van Winkle," The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of Irving's most anthologized, studied, and adapted sketches. Both stories are often paired together in books and other representations, and both are included in surveys of early American literature and Romanticism. Irving's depictions of regional culture and his themes of progress versus tradition, supernatural intervention in the commonplace, and the plight of the individual outsider in a homogeneous community permeate both stories and helped to develop a unique sense of American cultural and existential selfhood during the early nineteenth century.Go BompaCrazy!The Legend of Sleepy Hollow follows a tradition of folk tales and poems involving a supernatural wild chase The headless horseman has been a motif of European folklore since at least the Middle Ages.The Irish dullahan or dulachán ("dark man") is a headless fairy, usually riding a black horse and carrying his head under one arm (or holding it high to see at great distance). He wields a whip made from a human corpse's spine. When the dullahan stops riding, a death occurs. The dullahan calls out a name, at which point the named person immediately perishes. In another version, he is the headless driver of a black carriage. A similar figure, the gan ceann ("without a head"), can be frightened away by wearing a gold object or casting one in his path.The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm (Deutsche Sagen) recount two German folk tales of a headless horseman being spotted with their own eyes.One is set near Dresden in eastern Germany. In this tale, a woman from Dresden goes out early one Sunday morning to gather acorns in a forest. At a place called "Lost Waters", she hears a hunting horn. When she hears it again, she turns around she sees a headless man in a long grey coat sitting on a grey horse.In another German tale, set in Braunschweig, a headless horseman called "the wild huntsman" blows a horn which warns hunters not to ride the next day, because they will meet with an accident.In some German versions of the headless horseman, he seeks out the perpetrators of capital crimes. In others, he has a pack of black hounds with tongues of fire.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and Other Stories” is a volume of essays and short stories by Washington Irving that were first published serially between 1819 and 1820 and was originally collected as “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.” It includes some of the works for which would establish Irving as one of the preeminent American authors of his day and cement his literary legacy. The most famous of the works in this volume are arguably “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.” The first is the story of Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster from Connecticut who has moved to the New York countryside settlement of Tarry Town whose secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow is haunted by an infamous spectre, the Headless Horseman. The second story “Rip Van Winkle” tells the tale of a Dutch-American villager living during the time of the American Revolution who mysteriously falls asleep in New York’s Catskill Mountains only to discover when he awakes that many years have passed and much has changed. Along with these two classic tales thirty-two other stories and essays are included. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper, includes an introduction by Charles Addison Dawson, and a preface by the author.

The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and the haunting atmosphere that pervades the imaginations of its inhabitants and visitors. The most infamous spectre in the Hollow is the Headless Horseman, said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot away 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".