"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a short story by Washington Irving contained in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., written while he was living in Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820.

The story is set in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York in a sequestered glen called Sleepy Hollow, around the year 1790. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a priggish schoolmaster from Connecticut who is scared away from town by Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, his rival in love for the hand of eighteen-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of Baltus Van Tassel and a fifth-generation Dutch immigrant herself. The legend featured in the story is that of the Headless Horseman, the ghost of a Hessian trooper who lost his head to a cannon-ball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head."

The denouement of the fictional tale is set at the bridge in the real location of the Old Dutch Burying Ground in Sleepy Hollow (formerly North Tarrytown), adjacent to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. The characters of Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel may have been based on local residents known to the author. The character of Katrina is thought to have been based upon Eleanor and her name comes from Eleanor's aunt Catriena Ecker Van Tassel.

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" follows a tradition of folk tales and poems involving a supernatural wild chase, including Robert Burns's Tam O' Shanter (1790). With Irving's companion piece "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is the earliest American work of fiction to still be read widely today.

Notable film adaptations include:

• The Headless Horseman (1922), a silent version directed by Edward Venturini, and starring Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane. It was filmed on location in New York's Hudson River Valley.
• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), directed by James Algar, Clyde Geronimi and Jack Kinney, produced by Walt Disney Productions. It is an animated cartoon version of the story, paired with a similar treatment of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. The climactic ride is more extended than the original story, and whether the visually impressive Horseman is an actual ghost or a human in disguise is left unclear.
• Sleepy Hollow (1999), directed by Tim Burton. A movie adaptation which takes many liberties with the plot and characters.

Further reading

• Thomas S. Wermuth. Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley (2001)

External links

• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from The Harvard Classics (1917), hosted online at Bartleby.com
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at American Literature
• Old Dutch Burying Ground of Sleepy Hollow, the churchyard where Ichabod Crane sought sanctuary
• List of locations related to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
• Fortean Times article A fan of the story visits modern day Sleepy Hollow
• (Tim Burton)

1820 books | American short stories

La leyenda de Sleepy Hollow | La Légende de Sleepy Hollow | La leggenda della valle addormentata | Легенда о сонной лощине (мультфильм)