The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Journey into a quiet glen on the Hudson River where ghost stories are taken seriously, gossips flourish, and a superstitious schoolmaster named Ichabod Crane rides home one autumn night to meet the most famous specter in American literature. Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" — first published in 1819–1820 — gave the world the Headless Horseman, a tale that has haunted campfires, classrooms, and imaginations for two centuries. This edition presents the complete, unabridged original text exactly as Irving wrote it, accompanied by a new introduction that places the story in its historical moment and reader's notes that illuminate the language, lore, and landscape of the early American Republic. At once a ghost story, a comedy of manners, and a loving portrait of a vanishing Dutch countryside, it remains a cornerstone of the national imagination. Part of The Founding Texts Library.