The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Wr - Washington Irving [243]
4 (p. 203) The Stout Gentleman: The title character of this story is said to be Sir Walter Scott, who had become a literary celebrity despite the fact that he published his novels anonymously until 1827. The story is significant, however, because it offers a glimpse of the development of a modern readership for commercial fiction. Stuck in the “travellers’-room” of an inn and surrounded by salesmen whom he ironically describes as “commercial knights-errant” (p. 204), the narrator strives to catch a glimpse of the patron he assumes is a celebrity only after he has exhausted all of the light reading at his disposal—“Old newspapers, ... Good-for-nothing books, ... [and] an old volume of the Lady’s Magazine” (p. 205)—in other words, reading material exactly like the story of “The Stout Gentleman.”
5 (p. 213) The Historian: “The Historian” is a frame-narrative designed to introduce “a manuscript tale from the pen of my fellow-countryman, the late Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker” (p. 214), which includes the sequence of stories that follows: “The Haunted House,” “Dolph Heyliger,” and “The Storm-Ship.”
6 (p. 213) the “Arabian Nights”: Available to Irving in a number of translations, The Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Oriental stories that influenced Irving’s use of embedded narratives. In the following story sequence the narration of Geoffrey Crayon is turned over to Diedrich Knickerbocker, who in turn relates Antony Vander Heyden’s telling of “The Storm-Ship,” which Vander Heyden claims to give “in the very words in which it had been written out by Mynheer Selyne, an early poet of New Netherlandts” (pp. 253-254).
7 (p. 216) The Haunted House: “The Haunted House” introduces the succeeding story, “Dolph Heyliger,” the only story in Bracebridge Hall that is set in America. “Dolph Heyliger” is notable for its descriptions of the Hudson River valley. Along with “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” it contributed to the formation of a regional cultural heritage for New York comparable to that provided for New England in the short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
8 (p. 279) The Author’s Farewell: “The Author’s Farewell” to Bracebridge Hall is significant because of the way Irving returns to the cultural conflict between England and America he described in “English Writers on America.” Despite Irving’s effort to “[awaken] a chord of sympathy between the land of my fathers and the dear land which gave me birth,” some American critics condemned him as an Anglophile and an imitator of British and European literary models (p. 283).
Tales of a Traveller
1 (p. 287) To The Reader. Tales of a Traveller was published in 1824, two years after Bracebridge Hall. Irving thought it contained “some of the best things I have ever written,” but it was not well received by critics in England and America, partly because it was made up wholly of stories and lacked the familiar essays and sketches readers had come to expect from Irving. The selections in this edition are meant to illustrate the Gothic influence on Irving’s writing; also included are two of the tales attributed to Diedrich Knickerbocker, “Kidd the Pirate” and “The Devil and Tom Walker.”
2 (p. 293) The Hunting-Dinner: “The Hunting-Dinner” is the frame-narrative Irving designed to introduce the sequence of stories that comprise the first part of Tales of a Traveller. The last four tales of that sequence are included in this edition: “Adventure of the German Student,” “Adventure of the Mysterious Picture,” “Adventure of the Mysterious Stranger,” and “The Story of the Young Italian.”
3 (p. 297) the old gentleman with the haunted head proceeded: The subsequent tale is not “The Adventure of My Uncle” referred to here, but a later tale in the sequence that is also narrated by “the old gentleman with the haunted head.”
4 (p. 298) Adventure of