The complete tales of Washington Irving

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.

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.

This wonderful collection proves once and for all that there is more to Irving than "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". The stories contained within this volume are wonderfully told and sparkle with imagination. The pieces from "The Alahambra" were the most impressive.