Central Kansas Library System

Travel back in time to the days before the American Revolution, when Dutch settlers populated the little towns along the Hudson River and ghosts roamed the mountains and river valleys. In "Rip Van Winkle," a henpecked husband escapes his nagging wife by wandering the Catskills, where he encounters some mysterious mountain men and tastes a strange brew with unexpected effects. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" recounts schoolmaster Ichabod Crane's dream...

Bracebridge Hall, written by the esteemed author, Washington Irving, is a collection of location-based character sketches, detailing the lives and personalities of the occupants of a countryside manor in Yorkshire, England, owned by a squire. Narrated by an American man who is an old acquaintance of the squire, Bracebridge Hall follows the events leading up to the wedding of the squire's son, Guy, and his bride-to-be, Julia. Beginning with the arrival...

Two stories from the Catskill Mountains: one featuring a man who sleeps for twenty years, waking to a much-changed world and the other, a superstitious schoolmaster who encounters a headless horseman.

Compiled during a three-month stay in Granada, Spain, Tales of the Alhambra assembles descriptions, myths, and narratives of historical events. After completing a literary project in Madrid, author Washington Irving traveled to Granada, Spain. Immediately taken by its beauty and extravagance, Irving requested a travel guide and began filling notebooks and journals with his observations and description of the magnificent setting. Beginning with an...

In this collection of thirty-four essays and short stories, Washington Irving explores the personality of his pseudonym, Geoffrey Crayon, while providing a study on human behavior. Rip Van Winkle introduces the famed literacy title character, an unmotivated, care-free man who drinks and parties with strangers in the mountains, falls asleep, and wakes up twenty years later in post-revolution America. Also among this collection are tales of sentiment,...