The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

by Washington Irving

Overview

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a short story by Washington Irving contained in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., written while he was living in Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820. With Irving's companion piece "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest examples of American fiction still read today. PLOT The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (based on Tarrytown, 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, Baltus Van Tassel. As Crane leaves a party he attended at the Van Tassel home on an autumn night, 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". Ichabod mysteriously disappears from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related". Although the nature of the Headless Horseman is left open to interpretation, the story implies that the Horseman was really Brom Bones in disguise. BACKGROUND The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: hard bound book with a flowered silk cover and gold foil lettering, printed circa 1907. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was based on a German folktale, set in the Dutch culture of Post-Revolutionary War in New York State. The original folktale was recorded by Karl Musäus. An excerpt of Musäus: The headless horseman was often seen here. An old man who did not believe in ghosts told of meeting the headless horseman coming from his trip into the Hollow. The horseman made him climb up behind. They rode over bushes, hills, and swamps. When they reached the bridge, the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton. He threw the old man into the brook and sprang away over the treetops with a clap of thunder. The dénouement of the fictional tale is set at the bridge over the Pocantico River in the area of the Old Dutch Church and Burying Ground in Sleepy Hollow.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496071392
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	01/01/1900
Pages:	34
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.07(d)

About the Author

Washington Irving is considered by many to be the father of American literature. He died in 1859.

Michael Garland has made an indelible mark on the world of children's literature. His rich,colorful artwork captures the flavor of Washington Irving's classic The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Elizabeth Friedrich's Leah's Pony, Corinne Demas Bliss's Electra and the Charlotte Russe, and Ann Tompert's Saint Patrick and Saint Nicholas.

Mr. Garland wrote and illustrated Angel Cat, Dinner at Magritte's, Circus Girl, and My Cousin Katie, which was named an ALA Booklist Editors' Choice and a NCSS-CBC Notable Childrens Trade Book in the field of social studies. One of his paintings from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was included in the 1992 Society of Illustrators' Annual Show, and the entire book was selected for the organization's "Original Art of Children's Books" exhibit also in 1992.

Mr. Garland was awarded Certificates of Merit in the Society of Illustrators' Annual Shows from 1981-1988 and in 1990-1992. A native New Yorker, Michael Garland earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Pratt Institute in 1974. An avid landscape painter in his leisure time, Mr. Garland lives with his wife and three children in Patterson, New York, not far from the scene of Washington Irving's great American folktale.

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