The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

by Washington Irving

Overview

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, a collection of 34 essays and short stories by American author Washington Irving, contains the gothic tale "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." penned while Irving was a foreign resident of Birmingham, England. The first edition of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'' appeared in 1819. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," along with Irving's companion work "Rip Van Winkle," is one of the earliest works of American literature that has maintained enduring popularity, particularly around Halloween because of a figure known as the Headless Horseman who is thought to be a Hessian soldier who was severed by a cannonball during battle. Walt Disney created a second film adaption in 1949 as one of two episodes in the package movie The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. The story takes place in 1790 in a remote valley known as Sleepy Hollow, in the countryside near the Dutch hamlet of Tarry Town (actual Tarrytown, New York). Sleepy Hollow is well known for its ghosts and the eerie ambiance that captures both its residents and visitors' imaginations. While on a trip to Europe, Irving created The Sketch Book, and elements of the story can also be attributed to that continent.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789357481366
Publisher:	Double 9 Books
Publication date:	01/01/2023
Pages:	36
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.09(d)

About the Author

Washington Irving was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat who lived from April 3, 1783, to November 28, 1859. Rip Van Winkle (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which are found in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, are two of his best-known short stories. His historical writings include biographies of George Washington, Muhammad, and Oliver Goldsmith in addition to various histories of Spain in the fifteenth century that cover topics like the Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors. In the 1840s, Irving represented America as ambassador to Spain. Irving made his literary debut in 1802 with a collection of observant letters to the Morning Chronicle, penned under the alias Jonathan Oldstyle. Irving was born and raised in Manhattan to a family of merchants. He temporarily relocated to England in 1815 for the family business, and it was there that he shot to popularity with the 1819-1820 serial publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. He continued to publish often throughout his life, and eight months before his passing in Tarrytown, New York, at age 76, he finished a five-volume biography of George Washington.

Read an Excerpt

The Author's Account of Himself

I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her shel was turned eftsoones into a Toad, and thereby was forced to make a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape that he is faine to alter his mansion with his manners and to live where he can, not where he would.

I was always fond of visiting new scenes and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city; to the frequent alarm of my parents and the emolument of the town cryer. As I grew into boyhood I extended the range of my observations. My holy day afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed or a ghost seen. I visited the neighbouring villages and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, from whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.

This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes. With what longing eyes would Igaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth.

Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country, and had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification, for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains with their bright aerial tints; her valleys teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine-no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

But Europe held forth the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement-to tread as it were in the footsteps of antiquity-to loiter about the ruined castle-to meditate on the falling tower-to escape in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.

Reading Group Guide

1. Why does Iriving call this collection The Sketch Book? What effect is he trying to achieve with the preponderance of visual imagery?

2. How do the stories in The Sketch Book inform one another and function one another and function as a collection? How do the stories set in America--"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle"--distinguish themselves from Geoffrey Crayon's vignettes about his travels in England?

3. Alice Hoffman says in her Introduction that Irving is thought to have created the short-story genre in America. What constitutes a short story, and what are the hallmarks of the American short story? How does it break with its European predecessors yet still work within tradition?

4. Why do you think Washington Irving uses the writing and narration of the fictional Diedrich Knickerbocker (the pen name he used in writing his famous spoof A History of New York) to bookmark "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"? What effect does this have on the story itself? does it lend credulity or only make it more fantastic?

5. The poem that Irving quotes at the outset of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"--"The Castle of Indolence" by James Thomson--recounts the story of an enchanter who deprives all who enter his castle of their free will and their resolve. Why do you think Irving chose this particular poem? How does it inform your reading of the story?

6. How is this story influenced by the gothic literary tradition that preceded it, and how--in its setting, mood, plot, and message--does it embrace the gothic itself?

7. How has the village of Sleepy Hollow been affected or,conversely, unaffected by the American Revolution? In what context does the narrator refer to it?

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Will Moses, the great-grandson of Grandma Moses, has illustrated this American classic with a liveliness that its creator might have appreciated. This conjuring tale is a Halloween must.
— Rosemary Marotta

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW Washington Irving, illus. by Michael Garland. Boyds Mills, $8.95 ISBN 1-56397-605-6. Full-page oil paintings illustrate this unabridged edition of the classic spine-tingler. All ages. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 5-8-- An unabridged version of the classic tale of Ichabod Crane, his affection for the wealthy and beautiful Katrina Van Tassel, and his confrontation with the Headless Horseman. Despite Irving's outmoded narrative style, this is still an excellent ghost story that combines appropriate amounts of humor and terror while integrating Germanic legend with New England folklore, specifically that of New York State. Garland's realistic oil paintings are either portraitures or landscapes. The former are reminiscent of Barry Moser's work, while the latter resemble those by Thomas Locker. While these illustrations act as a sophisticated balance to Irving's wordy narrative, they do not consistently evoke the mood of Arthur Rackham's interpretation (1990). In her retelling for younger children (1987, both Morrow), Diane Wolkstein avoids the African-American stereotypes that Irving used for ``comic relief'' and concentrates on telling a good story, eliminating the complicated and archaic language of the period. All in all, this new version is useful where additional copies of the unabridged edition are needed. --Andrew W. Hunter, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg, Charlotte, NC

School Library Journal

The unabridged text of Washington Irving's classic folktale is illustrated by Gary Kelley's evocative color chalk drawings and b&w gravestone rubbings. 8x13". Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Many folk-art paintings illustrate this simplified retelling of Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Varied in size from small vignettes to double-page spreads, the colorful paintings are reminiscent of the works of Moses' great-grandmother, better known as Grandma Moses. A large-format picture book that will fill a need in some libraries.

Carolyn Phelan

Abridged but not rewritten, the classic tale is decorated with a plethora of very small, comically gothic cartoons that add an air of spooky grotesquerie. An overall color scheme of pale browns and oranges adds a properly autumnal air to Sleepy Hollow's knobby woodlands, and the supporting cast includes nearly as many ghosts, toothy imps and the like as it does human figures. Grimly's not much for verisimilitude-party guests at the Van Tassels include African-Americans, and there's a glimpse of a generic Native American earlier on-but burly "rantipole hero" Brom Bones looks rightly massive next to the exaggeratedly gawky figure of Ichabod Crane. The Headless Horseman not only sports a particularly eerie-looking twig between its shoulders but rides a red-eyed, demonic steed, and in three views on the final page the decayed schoolhouse has a decidedly haunted air. Still, this is not a particularly scary rendition, and because its text is chopped into scattered, easily digestible passages tucked between or inside the panels, it may have more appeal to less-able readers than full versions. (Fantasy. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews