The Legend
Washington Irving
Washington Irving wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1820, in a book that also holds Rip Van Winkle. He was born in New York in 1783, spent his last years at Sunnyside on the Hudson, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
Who was Washington Irving?
Washington Irving (1783 to 1859) was an American writer born in New York City. He wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, both published in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819 and 1820. He spent his last years at Sunnyside, on the Hudson, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
The plain facts
Washington Irving was born in New York City in 1783 and named for George Washington. He trained as a lawyer, served as the United States minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846, and wrote for most of his life. He died in 1859.
His best known book is The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which came out in parts in 1819 and 1820. It holds The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and five chapters on an English Christmas, later printed on their own as Old Christmas. Most of the rest of the book is about England.
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Before the Sketch Book, Irving invented a narrator. Diedrich Knickerbocker is a fictional old Dutch historian of New York, and A History of New York came out under his name in 1809. The book is a satire of the city’s early days. Irving kept the name. Rip Van Winkle opens by saying it was “found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker,” and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow carries the same line, in capitals, under its title. Both end with a note signed D. K.
Much of America’s St. Nicholas took shape in that book. In Knickerbocker’s pages St. Nicholas rides over the treetops in a wagon that carries his yearly presents for children, smokes a pipe, and lays a finger beside his nose. The expanded 1812 edition adds the stocking hung by the chimney on St. Nicholas Eve, found full in the morning. The poem A Visit from St. Nicholas came later, in 1823.
Sunnyside and the grave
In 1835 Irving bought Sunnyside, a riverside cottage on the Hudson at Irvington, New York, near Sleepy Hollow. He designed the cottage and its grounds himself and lived there until his death in 1859. Historic Hudson Valley keeps the house and opens it for tours.
He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which dates from 1849. The village around it later took the name Sleepy Hollow from his story.
The other stories
Rip Van Winkle is the Sketch Book’s other American tale: a good-natured idler in a village under the Catskills who sleeps twenty years and wakes in a changed country. The Christmas chapters follow a traveler through an old English Christmas at a country house: the stagecoach, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, the dinner. Project Gutenberg prints them on their own as Old Christmas, with Randolph Caldecott’s pictures.
Irving also wrote lives of Christopher Columbus and George Washington. The whole Sketch Book is free to read at Project Gutenberg, and so is A History of New York.
In Irving’s words
Irving, in the story’s first pages, on the valley.
Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1820. The voice reading Irving in the films was designed for Sleepy Hollow with ElevenLabs. It is not a recording of any person. The whole story is free to read.
I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.
On Roblox
In the game
Every line the narrator speaks in our five short films is Irving’s, taken from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as he published it in 1820. The voice reading them was designed for Sleepy Hollow and is not a recording of any person. The game is set in 1790, which is where Irving’s own “some thirty years since” lands when you count back from the year he wrote. Irving’s bridge is a plain wooden one over the brook; the covered bridge you build and run for is ours.
Keep reading
The questions beside this one.
Asked
What people ask about Washington Irving
He was born in New York City in 1783 and died in 1859. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
Rip Van Winkle, the Christmas chapters of the Sketch Book (printed on their own as Old Christmas), A History of New York under the name Diedrich Knickerbocker, and lives of Christopher Columbus and George Washington.
A narrator Irving made up: a fictional old Dutch historian of New York. A History of New York came out under his name in 1809, and both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are presented as tales found among his papers.
Yes. Sunnyside, at 3 West Sunnyside Lane in Irvington, New York, is kept by Historic Hudson Valley and open for tours in season. Check its site for dates.
Yes. It was published in 1820 and is in the public domain. The whole story is on Project Gutenberg, with the rest of the Sketch Book.
On Roblox
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