Short stories
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
Washington Irving · 1819
Opening lines
I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
An American traveller keeps a notebook of what he sees in England: a crossing, Westminster Abbey, an old-fashioned Christmas in a country manor, a visit to the birthplace of the great English dramatist. Between these pictures come two tales from the Hudson valley. In the first, an idler climbs into the mountain, drinks with strangers in old-fashioned clothes and falls asleep. In the second, a lanky, lovesick schoolmaster rides home at night along a road said to be haunted by a headless horseman.
Context
The instalments appeared in New York from C. S. Van Winkle starting in June 1819, seven in all until 1820, under the name of a fanciful narrator, Geoffrey Crayon. For lack of international copyright, the author also published the book in London to escape pirated reprints; Walter Scott helped him get it to John Murray. The two Hudson tales owe much to German legends. The pages on an English Christmas helped to revive the festival in the United States, and Charles Dickens imitated them in his own Christmas scenes.
Who it is for
About thirty short texts, to be read separately: travel sketches, essays and two tales. Old French translations, often in extracts.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success in the United States as in England, it made its author the first American writer admired in Europe and enabled him to live by his pen.
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