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  • Published: 1 December 2015
  • ISBN: 9781784870294
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $29.99

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

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'.

  • Published: 1 December 2015
  • ISBN: 9781784870294
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Washington Irving

Washington Irving (1783 – 1859) was born into a rich New York family, the youngest of eleven children. He was named after the great future American President, George Washington. Young Washington's early education was patchy but he developed an early love for books and writing. As an adult he didn't have to worry about earning a living and after practising law for a few years he began to write for newspapers and magazines. His first book, Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809), was the first American humorous book which was also literature. It was a great success but Irving continued to be only a part-time writer.

In 1815 he moved to London to manage the British end of the family business and stayed for seventeen years. When the family business collapsed in 1817, He had to make a living for the first time. The immediate result was The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent which contained his two most famous fantasy stories, Rip van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. These classic stories have kept Washington Irving's name alive. He is often called 'the father of American literature' because of the charm and style of his writing and because he was always breaking new ground.

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Praise for Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

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

Guardian

Beautifully composed of dense texture and dark pleasures

Daily Mirror

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

Daily Mail

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

Washington Post

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

Washington Post