In "Rip Van Winkle," a Dutch-American villager named Rip Van Winkle encounters mysterious Dutchmen in the Catskill Mountains. After drinking their potent liquor, he falls into a deep sleep that lasts for 20 years. When he finally wakes up, he discovers that the world has drastically changed, as he has missed the American Revolution. The story was...More
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820. His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain that deal with subjects such as Alhambra, Christopher Columbus and the Moors. Irving served as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s.
Irving was one of the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and he encouraged other American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville and Edgar...More
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820. His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain that deal with subjects such as Alhambra, Christopher Columbus and the Moors. Irving served as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s.
Irving was one of the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and he encouraged other American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. He was also admired by some British writers, including Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Francis Jeffrey and Walter Scott. He advocated for writing as a legitimate profession and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement.
Book Summary
In "Rip Van Winkle," a Dutch-American villager named Rip Van Winkle encounters mysterious Dutchmen in the Catskill Mountains. After drinking their potent liquor, he falls into a deep sleep that lasts for 20 years. When he finally wakes up, he discovers that the world has drastically changed, as he has missed the American Revolution. The story was inspired by a conversation about nostalgia with Irving's brother-in-law while Irving was living in Birmingham, England. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving admitted that he had never actually been there when he wrote the story.
Washington Irving
