Of Mischief and Mirth
Two early Dutch American roques leap merrily to mind whenever their famous creator in mentioned. One is the gangling Yankee schoolmaster Ichabod Crane that awkward butt of many past pranks who, riding a plow horse home from a party one night, is terrifyingly pursued by a headless horseman. The other is a genial lazy Catskillian who awakens from a twenty-year nap to find the Revolutionary War come and gone, himself an old man in a new young world.
Washington Irving wrote copiously more than The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, however, and this volume includes many of his neglected romances told in the slyly humorous vein of his two masterpieces. Not all are set in New York State; indeed, Ichabod and Rip themselves are European folk heroes who Irving Americanized. He was equally at home with German, Spanish and Indian legends, and his eye for local colour makes at least one tale of a plains buffalo hunt unforgettable. This collection, chosen from seven of Irvings forty volumes, represents at his finest a graceful writer often called the father of American literature.
Two early Dutch American roques leap merrily to mind whenever their famous creator in mentioned. One is the gangling Yankee schoolmaster Ichabod Crane that awkward butt of many past pranks who, riding a plow horse home from a party one night, is terrifyingly pursued by a headless horseman. The other is a genial lazy Catskillian who awakens from a twenty-year nap to find the Revolutionary War come and gone, himself an old man in a new young world.
Washington Irving wrote copiously more than The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, however, and this volume includes many of his neglected romances told in the slyly humorous vein of his two masterpieces. Not all are set in New York State; indeed, Ichabod and Rip themselves are European folk heroes who Irving Americanized. He was equally at home with German, Spanish and Indian legends, and his eye for local colour makes at least one tale of a plains buffalo hunt unforgettable. This collection, chosen from seven of Irvings forty volumes, represents at his finest a graceful writer often called the father of American literature.
