Description

There is a sequestered glen off the east coast of the Hudson, New York state, which has long continued under the sway of some witching power; the neighbourhood abounds with tales, haunted spots and twilight superstitions. But as hapless schoolmaster Ichabod Crane will discover, the wildest of all stories in this region of shadows relate to one particularly dreadful spectre – the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

Washington Irving’s comic horror story is the best known of this collection of stories, observations and sketches written on his travels around Britain and America in the eighteenth century. Also includes ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘Little Britain’.

Publisher Review

"Macabre horror, fish-out-of-water humour...A heady gumbo of witchcraft, apocalyptic prophecies and occult rivalries" * Guardian * "Irving was befriended by Sir Walter Scott, admired by Lord Byron and widely considered the first American writer who could hold his own with England's best" * Washington Post * "Beautifully composed of dense texture and dark pleasures" * Daily Mirror * "Irving is at his best...the inventor of the modern short story... The remote valleys and mountain glens, where strange contagions seem to hang in the air and ghosts and goblins dwell, seem as real to us today as they must have done centuries ago" * Daily Mail * "'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' is...a classic, essential, exquisitely American tale" * Washington Post *