The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
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.
Title page of the first edition
Washington Irving in 1820
An early admirer of Irving and his work, Sir Walter Scott encouraged his own publisher, John Murray, to take up The Sketch Book.
"The Christmas Dinner" illustrated by Randolph Caldecott (1876)
Washington Irving was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He wrote the short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. 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 the Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors. Irving served as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s.
Daguerreotype of Washington Irving (modern copy by Mathew Brady, original by John Plumbe)
Watercolor of Washington Irving's encounter with George Washington, painted in 1854 by George Bernard Butler Jr.
The fictional "Diedrich Knickerbocker" from the frontispiece of A History of New York, a wash drawing by Felix O. C. Darley
Portrait of Washington Irving by John Wesley Jarvis from 1809