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The Complete Tales Of Washington Irving

The Complete Tales Of Washington Irving
By Washington Irving

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Product Description

Washington Irving (1783–1859) was the first American literary artist to earn his living solely through his writings and the first to enjoy international acclaim. In addition to his long public service as a diplomat, Irving was amazingly prolific: His collected works fill forty volumes that encompass essays, history, travel writings, and multi-volume biographies of Columbus and Washington. But it is Irving’s mastery of suspense, characterization, tempo, and irony that transforms his fiction into virtuoso performances, earning him his reputation as the father of the American short story. Charles Neider has gathered all sixty-one of Irving's tales, originally scattered throughout his many collections of nonfiction essays and sketches, into one magnificent volume. Together, they reveal his wide range: besides the expected classics like "Rip Van Winkle," "The Spectre Bridegroom," "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and "The Devil and Tom Walker," his fiction embraces realistic tales, ghost stories, parodies, legends, fables, and satires. For those familiar only with secondhand retellings of Irving's most famous tales, this collection offers the opportunity to step inside Washington Irving's imagination and partake of its innumerable and timeless pleasures.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #89101 in Books
  • Published on: 1998-03-21
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 840 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Charles Neider is a noted literary critic, editor, and novelist. His many books as editor include Washington Irving’s George Washington: A Biography, The Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales of Mark Twain, The Great West: A Treasury of Firsthand Accountsand The Complete Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson. The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

A Spicy Brew5
Some give the sheaf to Charles Brockden Brown but I far prefer the mellow stylings of Washington Irving, the sage of Tarrytown. When I was a boy I was introduced to this splendid body of work by one of my grade school teachers, a collateral relative of Washington Irving, a man who hailed from upstate New York and who carried in his bloodlines some of the authentically spooky platelets of colonial America. During the Napoleonic period the US was not necessarily a pretty place to live in, and Irving's famous story THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN shows us some of the dark underbelly of American life. You really weren't safe out of your own good, and at night travel was even more dangerous. Plus, as anyone who's read the story of Ichabod Crane knows, people were just as prone to jeer and mock the funny-looking as they are today. The story is heartbreaking on two levels, the naturalistic and the symbolic. We all know someone like Ichabod Crane, and many of us find ourselves mirrored in his lonely gaze and terrifying gallop through Hessian country. Irving, like Hawthorne, wrote out many of his tales swearing they were as "his grandfather told him," and thus they are set in a period before his own, a misty place of the past that he knew how to make terrifyingly real and relevant.

My teacher also reminded us that Washington Irving was a very cultured man who believed, like Johnny Appleseed, in planting America with the fruits of other, older lands, so that among his stories you will find some from Europe, re-told to make them apropos and socially relevant for the rawness of a new world.

For horror and fright Washington Irving has few rivals, and the bonus is an added richness as of old apples carpeting a winter meadow, and thus this book, edited by a Twain expert, smells like spicy cider on New Years Eve; lots of good cheer along with your ghosts.

A Mind Unlimited and Unleashed5
A treasure chest indeed. I had read all of the old yarns such as Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, of course, during my childhood exposure to literature, and the Western Narratives (excellent) but had not read some of the others. This, therefore, was an important undertaking for me, one that I'm glad I took the time to do. The one that highly captivated me during this reading was "The Devil and Tom Walker". A more fitting, timely tale could not be found for the year 2008, all these years hence.

If you're like me, it presents a difficult search trying to find something really worthwhile to read without wasting time or money. Therefore, I returned to some of the writers of yore to investigate. I write this review because this very important work should be read by intrepid younger people of today as well as re-read by those of us who missed some of it ourselves; and if any one of them is looking for excitement and lasting enrichment, this author will give it to you. If you haven't read it before, then it's new work to you, worthy of your time as is all reading of talented pens; and of a kind not seen today in any great measure. This type of talent will never go out of style. Every line is interesting, captivating. His prose, the descriptive passages as he leads you into the deepest innermost facets of his characters, is truly what great literature is all about. Some of the most famed of authors were difficult to read and therefore to hold intense interest, not so with Irving. He knew how to attract you from the first sentence, and hold the reader hostage throughout.

This book is highly recommended, along with "Three Western Narratives", another wonderful example of the scope of his work.

Witty and charming5
I very much enjoy the writers of earlier times for their leisurely pace. This collection of Mr. Irving's tales did not disappoint me. Living in Louisiana, I found "The Creole Village" of particular interest; I only wish it had been longer.