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The Sketch Book

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The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., commonly referred to as The Sketch Book, is a collection of 34 essays and short stories written by the American author Washington Irving. It was published serially throughout 1819 and 1820. The collection includes two of Irving's best-known stories, attributed to the fictional Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker: "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle". It also marks Irving's first use of the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon, which he would continue to employ throughout his literary career.

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The Sketch Book, along with James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, was among first widely read works of American literature in Britain and Europe. It also helped advance the reputation of American writers with an international audience.[citation needed]

Overview
Apart from "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" – the pieces which made both Irving and The Sketch Book famous – the collection of tales includes "Roscoe", "The Broken Heart", "The Art of Book-making", "A Royal Poet", "The Spectre Bridegroom", "Westminster Abbey", "Little Britain", and "John Bull". Irving's stories were highly influenced by German folktales; "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was inspired by a folktale recorded by Karl Musäus.

Stories range from the maudlin (such as "The Wife" and "The Widow and Her Son") to the picaresque ("Little Britain") and the comical ("The Mutability of Literature"), but the common thread running through The Sketch Book – and a key part of its attraction to readers – is the personality of Irving's pseudonymous narrator, Geoffrey Crayon. Erudite, charming, and never one to make himself more interesting than his tales, Crayon holds The Sketch Book together through the sheer power of his personality – and Irving would, for the rest of his life, seamlessly enmesh Crayon's persona with his own public reputation.

Little more than five of the 33 chapters deal with American subjects: the essays "English Writers on America", "The Traits of Indian Character", "Philip of Pokanoket: An Indian Memoir", and parts of "The Author's Account of Himself" and "The Angler"; and Knickerbocker's short stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Most of the remainder of the book consists of vignettes of English life and landscape, written with the author's characteristic charm while he lived in England. Irving wrote in a preface for a later edition:

It was not my intention to publish [the chapters] in England, being conscious that much of their contents could be interesting only to American readers, and, in truth, being deterred by the severity with which American productions had been treated by the British press.

Sketch Book American Stories Irving's Legend Sleepy Geoffrey