$21.20 ...  PAPERBACK

$7.05 ...    E-BOOK

​

He was the greatest American writer of his time: mentor to Poe, Dickens, and Hawthorne, his country’s first professional author, and a writer of uniqely American ghost stories about growth, change, and identity. His was the complex personality of an existentially anxious, emotionally complex man disturbed by his fame and haunted by loneliness. These disquieting themes course through his Gothic tales – “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Devil and Tom Walker,” and more – tales haunted by spectres of anxiety.

 

Though he was once more famous for his social satires and ironic humor, Irving’s fictional oeuvre is primarily devoted to speculative fiction: ghost stories, weird tales, fantasies, and horror. And there’s far more than the Headless Horseman to frighten readers: ghost pirates, vengeful Doppelgangers, guillotined women, haunted treasure chests, hanged men’s ghosts, rural superstitions, dancing furniture, portraits with moving eyes, hellhounds, goblin horses, enchanted princesses, supernatural caves of wonder, haunted paintings, ghostly nuns, spectral crusaders, and possessed bedchambers are among his many bogeys.

 

His universe is among the sunniest in horror fiction – brighter certainly than Le Fanu’s, Hodgson’s, or Stoker’s – but its sunnyside hides a dark posterior, engulfed in shadow and swallowed up in night. Irving is the very definition of one who whistles past a graveyard, bringing sangfroid into spaces of anxiety and self-doubt, and while his characters are grotesque, bordering on the burlesque – like the spindly Ichabod Crane, the bearded Rip Van Winkle, or the leather-trousered Bold Dragoon – they cannot entirely hide the very real fears that they represent. Irving’s horrors aren’t likely to make you jump, but they might just keep you awake, or fill your waking life with strange dreams.  At its kindest, Irving’s world is one of narcotic daydreams that seduce and intoxicate; at its worst, it is waking up later that night – alone, confused, and hungover. His fantasies are pleasantly seductive, but like Rip Van Winkle’s “wicked flagon,” they also have a powerful bite.       

​

TALES INCLUDED in this ANNOTATED EDITION:

​

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Wolfert's Roost

Rip Van Winkle

St. Mark's Eve

The Spectre Bridegroom 

The Hunting Dinner

The Adventure of My Uncle

The Adventure of My Aunt

The Adventure of My Grandfather

The Adventure of the German Student

Guests from Gibbet Island 

The Haunted House

Dolph Heyliger and The Storm Ship

The Devil and Tom Walker

Golden Dreams

Don Juan

 The Grand Prior of San Minorca

The Mason's Adventure 

The Arabian Astrologer

The Two Discreet Statues 

The Moor's Legacy

Don Munio de Hinojosa 

The Engulfed Convent

​

​