On the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

The author of this collection is Washington Irving, who wrote under the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon. The stand-out pieces here are already well-recognized in the US, above all Rip Van Winkle and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (of which Rip Van Winkle is better, IMHO). I really love the sleepy, Hudson-Dutch atmosphere of both of those stories—it feels like an age that disappeared, although surely it never existed in the first place.

The rest of the stories here feel distinctly British and much less American. If I remember right, Irving wrote the bulk of these while in the UK and with a British audience in mind. That’s all well and good, but his British-oriented stories don’t feel anywhere near as magical as the American ones (with, perhaps, the exception of his discussions of Christmas and Little Britain). Other material here is good, especially “The Mutability of Literature” and “The Spectre Bridegroom.”