Selected Classics of Washington Irving

Washington Irving essentially invented the American short story, and these two tales have been haunting the American imagination for two centuries. In "Rip Van Winkle," a likable but lazy Dutch villager drinks enchanted liquor in the Catskill Mountains, sleeps for twenty years, and wakes to find his daughter grown, his wife dead, and an entirely new nation born during his absence. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" follows the lanky, superstitious schoolmaster Ichabod Crane as he courts the wealthy Katrina Van Tassel, only to be chased through the woods by a headless specter. Together with Irving's witty essays on English life, these stories blend European Gothic traditions with Dutch colonial New York and a distinctly American strain of humor and longing. These are the tales that taught America how to dream about its own past.