The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

Alternate title: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

The timeless collection that introduced Rip Van Winkle, Ichabod Crane, and the Headless Horseman

Perhaps the marker of a true mythos is when the stories themselves overshadow their creator. Originally published under a pseudonym as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories gave America its own haunted mythology. This collection of larger-than-life tales contains Washington Irving’s best-known literary inventions — Ichabod Crane, the Headless Horseman, and Rip Van Winkle — that continue to capture our imaginations today.

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Synopsis for the Tartarus Press edition (2009):

Sewn signatures, printed on 125gsm acid-free paper, and bound by Atheneum Press in blue grey cloth stamped in black, with a silk ribbon marker and head and tailbands. 300 copies.

Contents:

-Introduction by S.T. Joshi.

-From The Sketch Book: 'Rip Van Winkle', 'The Spectre Bridegroom', 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'.

-From Bracebridge Hall: 'The Historian', 'The Haunted House', 'Dolph Heyliger', 'The Storm-Ship'.

-From Tales of a Traveller: Strange Stories by a Nervous Gentleman: 'The Great Unknown' (a preface), 'The Hunting-Dinner', 'The Adventure of My Uncle', 'The Adventure of My Aunt, 'The Bold Dragoon; or, The Adventure of My Grandfather', 'The Adventure of the German Student', 'The Adventure of the Mysterious Picture', 'The Adventure of the Mysterious Stranger', 'The Story of the Young Italian'. The Money-Diggers: 'Hell Gate', 'Kidd the Pirate', 'The Devil and Tom Walker', 'Wolfert Webber; or, Golden Dreams', 'Adventure of the Black Fisherman'. Legends of The Alhambra: 'The Mysterious Chambers' 'The Adventure of the Mason', 'Legend of the Arabian Astrologer', 'Legend of Prince Ahmed Al Kamel', 'Legend of the Moor's Legacy', 'Legend of the Rose of the Alhambra', 'Governor Manco and the Soldier', 'Legend of the Two Discreet Statues', 'Legend of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa', 'The Legend of the Enchanted Soldier'.

-From Heath's Book of Beauty: 'The Haunted Ship'. Wolfert's Roost: 'Wolfert's Roost', 'The Grand Prior of Minorca', 'Guests from Gibbet Island', 'Don Juan: A Spectral Research', 'Legend of the Engulphed Convent', 'The Phantom Island'.

-'Bibliography' by Richard Dalby

This volume is the first to assemble all of Washington Irving's short stories in the supernatural genre, and the impressive array of work on offer makes Irving a worthy pioneer of the American weird tradition.

Perhaps best known for two tales steeped in early American legendry, 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow', Washington Irving emerges as the most distinguished American writer in the genre of the period following the early Gothic novels of 1764-1820 to Edgar Allan Poe in the 1840s.

Born in New York in 1783, the young Irving practiced law and travelled widely in Europe, where many of his stories are set. Taking up journalism and then fiction, Irving remained devoted to his own country and was knowledgeable about the legends of the early Dutch settlers and Native Americans of the New York area. He was thus able to imbue the American weird story with its own supernatural milieu. The scope of Irving's weird writing is thus impressively wide-ranging, and it is, until now, only its scattered nature that has robbed him of the credit he deserves.