Complete Fictional Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated)
Read Complete Fictional Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated) Online
Authors: Washington Irving
The Complete Works of
WASHINGTON
IRVING
(1783-1859)
Contents
THE SKETCH BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
LETTERS OF JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, GENT.
POETRY INTRODUCTION by William R. Langfeld
CHRONICLE OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA
THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE. THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON: VOLUME I
ELIA, AND GEOFFREY CRAYON by William Hazlitt
SPEECH: NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 18, 1842 by Charles Dickens
A FABLE FOR CRITICS by James Russell Lowell
POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE by George Parsons Lathrop
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN WASHINGTON IRVING AND EDGAR ALLAN POE
WASHINGTON IRVING by Henry W. Boynton
WASHINGTON IRVING by Charles Dudley Warner
© Delphi Classics 2014
The Complete Works of
WASHINGTON
IRVING
By
Delphi
Classics, 2014
Interested in classic American literature?
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For the first time in digital publishing history, Delphi Classics is proud to present the complete works of these American masters.
William Street
,
Tarrytown
,
New York
— the site of
Irving
’s birthplace
New York was a small city at the time of Irving’s birth, with only 23,000 inhabitants. He was born in lower
Manhattan
– the island in the right hand corner.
GENT
.
This is a collection of 34 essays and short stories published in serial format from 1819 to 1820. The collection includes
Irving
’s two most famous works,
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
and
Rip Van Winkle
. The collection also marks
Irving
’s first use of the pseudonym “Geoffrey Crayon,” which he continued to employ throughout his literary career.
The Sketch Book
became one of the first widely read works of American literature in
Britain
and
Europe
, helping to promote the reputation of other American writers to international audiences.
The stories range from sentimental pieces such as
The Wife
and
The Widow and Her Son
to picaresque romps with
Little Britain
and the humorous
The Mutability of Literature
. However, the collection’s most noticeable feature is the inimitable personality of
Irving
’s narrator, Geoffrey Crayon. Scholarly and charming, though sensitive enough not to obstruct his tales with his own character, Crayon was the collection’s immediate attraction for the reading public.
Irving
had started writing the tales shortly after moving to
England
, where he hoped to preserve his family’s trading business in 1815. When the business suffered bankruptcy in 1817,
Irving
was left with no position and very few prospects. He tried at first to serve as an intermediary between American and English publishers, searching for English books to reprint in
America
and vice versa, with little success. In the autumn of 1818,
Irving
’s brother William, sitting as a Congressman from
New York
, secured for him a political appointment as chief clerk to the Secretary of the U.S. Navy, and urged his younger brother to return home. Irving instead decided to remain in England and take his chances as a writer, announcing at the time, “I shall not return home until I have sent some writings before me that shall, if they have merit, make me return to smiles, rather than skulk back to the pity of my friends.”
Having spent late 1818 and the early part of the following year working tirelessly on a collection of short stories and essays,
The Sketch Book
was eventually published in 1819 to critical acclaim. In
Scotland
, the world literary figure Sir Walter Scott was a great admirer of
Irving
’s writing, advising John Murray to publish his work. The collection was an immediate commercial success, winning fame and popularity for
Irving
and establishing his reputation on both sides of the
Atlantic
. Lord Byron was quoted as saying, “I know it by heart”, while Sir Walter Scott reviewed the work as “positively beautiful”.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
has since become one of the most influential ghost stories of the early nineteenth century. Set in
Tarry
Town
, Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and haunting atmosphere. Legends tell of the spectre of the Headless Horseman, believed to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, killed during the American Revolutionary War and who “rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head”.
The story concerns the tale of Ichabod Crane, a lean and superstitious schoolmaster from
Connecticut
, who competes with Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt, the town rogue, for the hand of the beautiful Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer, Baltus Van Tassel. However, all of their fates are about to be inexplicably entwined in the mystery of the Headless Horseman…
Washington
Irving
by John Wesley Jarvis, c. 1809