Apart from "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" - the pieces which made both Irving and The Sketch Book famous - other tales include "Roscoe", "The Broken Heart", "The Art of Book-making", "A Royal Poet", "The Spectre Bridegroom", "Westminster Abbey", "Little Britain", and "John Bull". His stories were highly influenced by German folktales, with "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" being inspired by a folktale recorded by Karl Musaus. Stories range from the maudlin (such as "The Wife" and "The Widow and Her Son") to the picaresque ("Little Britain") and the comical ("The Mutability of Literature"), but the common thread running through The Sketch Book - and a key part of its attrac...

The Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. (1824) is a compilation of eight humorous and observational letters written by American writer, Washington Irving, under the pseudonym, Jonathan Oldstyle. These eight letters and one additional were first published as a series of "Letters to the Editor" of the New York paper, The Morning Chronicle, between 1802 and 1803. In them Oldstyle skewered the local New York social scene on the topics of etiquette, marriage, fashion, and other particulars of human interaction.

Most of Oldstyle's observations took place in the theatre, but really had less to do with that venue and more to do with an analysis of men and women acting out their own partic...

This is a collection of essays, verbal sketches, and stories by Washington Irving. Irving lived at the Alhambra Palace while writing some of the material for his book. In 1828, Washington Irving traveled from Madrid, where he had been staying, to Granada, Spain. At first sight, he described it as "a most picturesque and beautiful city, situated in one of the loveliest landscapes that I have ever seen." He immediately asked the then-governor of the historic Alhambra Palace as well as the archbishop of Granada for access to the palace, which was granted because of Irving's celebrity status. Aided by a 35-year old guide named Mateo Ximenes, Irving was inspired by his experience to write Tale...

A compilation of chronicles of the numerous impostors and impostures of kings, queens, and rulers.

Jean Ingelow (1820 – 1897) was one of the more famous poets of the period, indeed many people suggested that she should succeed Alfred, Lord Tennyson as the first female Poet Laureate when he died in 1892. Mopsa the Fairy, written in 1869 is one of her more enduring stories. It is a delightful fantasy about a young boy who discovers a nest of young fairies and tells of their adventures together.

Die Jugenderinnerungen Karl Leberecht Immermanns sind ursprünglich in den drei Bänden »Memorabilien« eingeschlossen, die so vielerlei enthalten, daß sie im Ganzen nur wenigen Lesern mundgerecht sein können. Sodann hat Immermann durch seine Bescheidenheit und seine Betrachtungslust sich verleiten lassen, die Erzählung der eigenen und der vaterländischen Erlebnisse immer wieder durch lange geschichtsphilosophische, politische, literarische und andere Erörterungen zu unterbrechen und Vergleiche zwischen 1840 und 1810 zu ziehen, die uns Nachkömmlinge nicht mehr fesseln können. Es sind Leitartikel vorzüglichster Art, aber wer mag jetzt noch Leitartikel von Anno 1840 lesen? Auch vermeidet Immer...

The Wild Duck (1884) (original Norwegian title: Vildanden) is by many considered Ibsen's finest work, and it is certainly the most complex. It tells the story of Gregers Werle, a young man who returns to his hometown after an extended exile and is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal. Over the course of the play, the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder ...

Rosmersholm is a play written in 1886 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In the estimation of many critics the piece is Ibsen’s masterwork, only equalled by The Wild Duck of 1884. As expressed by the protagonist, Rosmer, the theme of the play is social and political change, in which the traditional ruling classes relinquish their right to impose their ideals on the rest of society, but the action is entirely personal, resting on the conduct of the immoral, or amoral, “free thinking” heroine, Rebecca, who sets herself to undermine Rosmer’s religious and political beliefs because of his influential position in the community. Rebecca has abandoned not only Christianity but, unlike Rosm...

The title character in Ibsen's drama, Ellida Wangel, is married to a prosperous doctor, but feels stifled by her roles as wife and stepmother to her husband's two daughters by a previous marriage, Hilde and Bolette. Ten years earlier she had promised to marry another man - and on a sultry summer day, he comes back to her. Ellida must decide whether to choose the safety of her life with Wangel, or to yield to the siren song of the sea.

Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts was first published in 1881 and staged in 1882, and like his earlier play A Doll's House, profoundly shocked his contemporaries. Dubbed "a dirty deed done in public" by one of its critics, the play focuses on (among other things) venereal disease, euthanasia, and incest. The original title literally means "the ones who return," and the play is about how we can deal with the awful legacy of the past.