The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Macabre Tales
by Washington Irving
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Horror rides astride a shadowy steed and fantastic beings haunt daylit settings in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow & Other Macabre Tales, a collection of the best weird fiction of Washington Irving. Blending sly humor with supernatural thrills, these tales are among the best loved of all American literature. In the thirteen stories gathered for this volume, Irving evokes the colorful landscapes of his Hudson Valley hometown, and conjures characters and creatures from its historical past for a show more unique kind of weird tale that speaks directly to America's experience as a fledgling nation fashioning its own folk heritage. Selections include Rip Van Winkle The Legend of Sleepy Hollow The Adventure of the German Student The Devil and Tom Walker Guests of Gibbet Island This volume includes several if Irving's fanciful retellings of classic continental folktales and legends. As colorful and imaginative as any of his American tales, they reveal Irving to have been one of the most creative writers to have bridged the European and American Gothic traditions. show lessTags
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Washington Irving’s famous story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, both anchors and outshines all of the other stories in this collection. Everyone knows the story of the headless horseman. But what is surprising here is the ambiguity in explanation in Irving’s story. Is the headless horseman a real demon, or is Ichabod Crane the brunt of a rival suitor’s frightening practical joke?
In many of the other ‘macabre’ tales collected here, Irving strikes the same ambiguous tone, falling short of embracing the supernatural. He leaves just enough of a possibility that the explanation for the odd events is an overactive imagination or a misunderstanding. For instance, in “The Adventure of the Mysterious Picture”, the narrator show more reveals that the host of a ghost-telling party had purposefully planted a seed in the mind of the guests to see how many of them could work themselves into a frightened frenzy. And in “The Spectre Bridegroom”, the ‘ghost’ is a man who purposely holds himself out as a dead man in order to gain access to a young lady.
Besides “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, my favorite story was “The Adventure of the German Student”. In this tale, the ambiguity in the telling of the story is whether the young German student is of sound mind and body, given a great deal of isolation and depression, when he brings home a bride who has literally just lost her head.
Well over half of the ‘macabre’ tales are really pirate or swashbuckling tales. And while there is always a good deal of the supernatural with pirates, these stories are not as much fun as the darker, more gothic ones.
Bottom Line: A fun collection of ghost and odd tales, though fans of the pirate genre will be happy to find over half the collection devoted to buried treasure and the like.
3 ½ bones!!!! show less
In many of the other ‘macabre’ tales collected here, Irving strikes the same ambiguous tone, falling short of embracing the supernatural. He leaves just enough of a possibility that the explanation for the odd events is an overactive imagination or a misunderstanding. For instance, in “The Adventure of the Mysterious Picture”, the narrator show more reveals that the host of a ghost-telling party had purposefully planted a seed in the mind of the guests to see how many of them could work themselves into a frightened frenzy. And in “The Spectre Bridegroom”, the ‘ghost’ is a man who purposely holds himself out as a dead man in order to gain access to a young lady.
Besides “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, my favorite story was “The Adventure of the German Student”. In this tale, the ambiguity in the telling of the story is whether the young German student is of sound mind and body, given a great deal of isolation and depression, when he brings home a bride who has literally just lost her head.
Well over half of the ‘macabre’ tales are really pirate or swashbuckling tales. And while there is always a good deal of the supernatural with pirates, these stories are not as much fun as the darker, more gothic ones.
Bottom Line: A fun collection of ghost and odd tales, though fans of the pirate genre will be happy to find over half the collection devoted to buried treasure and the like.
3 ½ bones!!!! show less
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Washington Irving, one of the first Americans to achieve international recognition as an author, was born in New York City in 1783. His A History of New York, published in 1809 under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, was a satirical history of New York that spanned the years from 1609 to 1664. Under another pseudonym, Geoffrey Crayon, he wrote show more The Sketch-book, which included essays about English folk customs, essays about the American Indian, and the two American stories for which he is most renowned--"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle." Irving served as a member of the U.S. legation in Spain from 1826 to 1829 and as minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846. Following his return to the U.S. in 1846, he began work on a five-volume biography of Washington that was published from 1855-1859. Washington Irving died in 1859 in New York. show less
Common Knowledge
- Disambiguation notice
- Introduction /
Rip Van Winkle /
The spectre bridegroom /
The legend of Sleepy Hollow
Strange stories by a nervous gentleman /
The devil and Tom Walker /
Wolfert Webber, or golden dreams /
Guests from Gib... (show all)bet Island /
Legend of the two discreet statues /
The Grand Prior of Minocra /
Don Juan: a spectral research /
Legend of the engulphed convent /
The enchanted island
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