Publisher's Synopsis
Washington Irving (1783-1859) was an American essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat. He wrote biographies of Washington, Goldsmith, Columbus, and others, histories of the Moors in Spain and the Alhambra, and an account of a survey of the interior of the US. He spent three years in Europe in his early life, and later seventeen years in England and Europe. He was a friend or respected colleague of Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Herman Melville, and was perhaps the first American writer to become famous in England and Europe and to make a living from his writing. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., commonly referred to as The Sketch-Book, is a collection of 34 essays and short stories. It was first published in serial form through 1819 and 1820, and was often revised and published with slightly different contents by various publishers. This version is based on 'The Author's Revised Edition' of 1888. The collection includes two of Irving's best-known stories: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Authors might also enjoy 'The Art of Book-Making, ' 'The Mutability of Literature, ' and 'L'Envoy.' This edition corrects several typos, modernises 19th century punctuation and spelling, and adds some 'scene breaks.' The (often very long) footnotes have been collected together as end notes and numbered, and the extensive quotations have set off as blockquotes. Material within curly brackets has been added. The text was taken from Project Gutenberg 2048-h.htm and checked against thesketchbook00irvirich.pdf from the Internet Archive. The images were taken from Google Images. Edit: Version 2 corrects an embarrassing mistake with the cover and title page.
