Washington Irving

An eighteenth-century idler who sleeps for twenty years in the Catskill Mountains awakens to a much-changed world.

Washington Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra" is really two books in one. The first section chronicles Irvings 1829 visit to the crumbling Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. Irving was permitted to reside within the palace grounds. His beautifully detailled descriptions of the deteriorating palace and its inhabitants fit well within the romantic vision that was beginning to sweep Europe. One can only imagine Irving's influence in shaping the popularity...

Separated into four parts, Tales of a Traveler features twenty-seven works of short fiction, all catering to a sense of adventure and interest in the macabre. The first part, titled Strange Stories by a Nervous Gentleman explores the odd escapades of its protagonists. In The Adventure of a German Student, a young man meets a strange woman on a stormy night, looking for shelter. The student allows the woman to stay in his apartment for the night, but...

These digital Classics are abridged and adapted into reading leveled high-interest, low readability illustrated chapter novels including the complete story in 10 short chapters. This high-interest low-readability title is appropriate for all ages. Introduce students to great classic literature while improving comprehension, vocabulary and fluency.

The nineteenth-century author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow presents a vivid history of the Granada War, which ended Islamic rule in Spain. From 1482 to 1492, Catholic monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon mounted a series of military campaigns against the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. Washington Irving's acclaimed Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada describes the struggles and numerous battles of the ten-year conflict, which culminated...

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...

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...

Sleepy Hollow is known for being home to ghosts and spirits, the most famous of which is the terrifying Headless Horseman, a spectre searching for the head he lost to a stray cannonball during the American Revolutionary War. Ichabod Crane, a superstitious schoolmaster, is more concerned with earning the hand of Katrina Van Tassel than worrying about ghosts, but the night that he expects to earn Katrina's affections holds something quite different...

This 1831 volume focuses on lesser-known explorers like Alonzo de Ojeda, Diego de Nicuesa, Juan Ponce de Leon, and Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, among others. Followers of Christopher Columbus, these men experienced first hand the excitement of discovery in a time when there were entire worlds to be found.

When Washington Irving returned to America after seventeen years abroad, he headed west on a surveying mission deep into Native American territory. Irving, as Crayon, is a careful observer of the great range of human life, his skills evident in A Crayon Miscellany, a collection of sketches about his experiences on the frontier.