Biography

America's first international literary celebrity was born in New York City, the eleventh child in a close-knit family. After writing satirical sketches and essays for his brothers' newspapers for some years, Irving captured the nation's attention with the fictitious A History of New York, supposedly written by a curious old gentleman named Diedrich Knickerbocker. In May 1815, Irving left the country for what would be a seventeen-year sojourn in Europe, where he worked first as an importer in Liverpool, then as an attaché to the American legation in Spain, and finally as secretary to the American legation in London. His diverse works range from The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828) and The Alhambra (1832), both written during his stay in Spain, to A Tour of the Prairies (1835) and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville U.S.A. (1837), studies of the American West written on his return from Europe, to a five-volume life of George Washington. However, his Sketch Book (1819-20), which included Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, remains his most recognized and influential contribution to American literature.

Explorations

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was published in February of 1820, as the last piece in the last installment of The Sketch Book. Rip Van Winkle had been published in the first installment in 1819. As our first truly successful "man of letters," Irving is delightfully hard to classify as a member of any particular literary movement. A voluminous writer, he turned out satires in the eighteenth-century tradition, comic and Romantic travel accounts and legends; he published histories, biographies, and parodies of both genres. In subject and style, his free range and geniality made him very popular, but also liable to charges, in the midst of his career, of being a bit too urbane and Continental to be a truly "American" writer. The best reply to that accusation is probably his lasting success in imagining and haunting the Hudson River landscape. For the Catskills, the Tarrytown region, and old Dutch New York, Irving is the maker of lasting legends.

1. The last words of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow -- in some ways the "last words" on all the stories in The Sketch Book -- are these by the storyteller: "I don't believe one half of it myself." These words come after the statement of three bits of wisdom which "the story was intended most logically to prove." Is this a didactic fable, a comic parody of such a tale, or both? By poking fun at both the listener and the storyteller, what effect does Irving achieve?

2. Take a moment and try reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as an allegory, the way that many people read Rip Van Winkle. With his mixture of book-learning and superstition, what might Ichabod Crane represent? How about Brom Bones? Work out an allegorical reading of the tale -- and then comment on the advantages and disadvantages of reading the story this way.

3. With regard to Susanna Rowson and Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, readers often comment on the peculiar status of imaginative fiction in the young American republic and on Rowson's attempts to dignify and justify her narrative with long patches of didacticism and moral exhortation. How does Irving explicitly and implicitly address the practice of telling "legends" and freewheeling imaginative tales?

Other sites to consult:

• Romanticism: Washington Irving. A bibliography, overview, and study questions on the PAL: Perspectives in American Literature site maintained by Paul P. Reuben (California State University, Stanislaus). Also includes a link to an online text of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
• Irving online texts. A vast repository of Irving's works.
• Rip Van Winkle site. This site from Daniel Anderson's classes at the University of Texas at Austin provides analyses of the story and a link to the complete text online.
• Irving overview. From "A Student's History of American Literature" on the Bibliomania site.
• Nineteenth-century Irving biographies.
• Sunnyside: the home of Washington Irving.