Washington Irving

Washington Irving (1783–1859) helped found American literature with The Sketch Book, whose ‘Rip Van Winkle’, a man who sleeps twenty years and wakes to a changed world, is an early and influential time-displacement tale, and whose ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ remains a cornerstone of American supernatural storytelling. His genial blend of folklore, humour and the uncanny shaped the young nation’s imaginative writing.