The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
by Washington Irving | 1820

Written during a time when American writing was still treated like the weird cousin at the fancy European dinner table, Washington Irving helped change that with polished, spooky folklore set in real places. Sleepy Hollow drops us into a dreamy Hudson River valley where old legends linger, and where one superstitious schoolmaster is about to learn that local ghost stories are way funnier when they are happening to someone else.