The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Wr - Washington Irving [244]
5 (p. 304) Adventure of the Mysterious Picture: With this story Irving is attempting a Gothic tale of greater intensity than the stories that figure in “Dolph Heyliger” or “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” It is not the features of the painting that terrorize the narrator but “some horror of the mind, some inscrutable antipathy awakened by this picture” (p. 306). Whereas the reader of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” realizes that Ichabod Crane is being chased by Brom Bones disguised as the Headless Horseman, the reader of “The Mysterious Picture” participates in the narrator’s “state of nervous agitation” (p. 307).
6 (p. 312) Adventure of the Mysterious Stranger: Presented as an explanation of “Adventure of the Mysterious Picture,” this story anticipates the theme of alienation central to stories such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Wakefield” or Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd.” However, the subsequent “The Story of the Young Italian” provides a solution to the mystery that renders this sequence more conventional than Hawthorne’s or Poe’s narratives of isolation in the midst of society.
7 (p. 320) The Story of the Young Italian: “The Story of the Young Italian” concludes the sequence of stories that began with “Adventure of the Mysterious Picture.” Irving set “Adventure of the German Student” in Paris and “The Story of the Young Italian” in Genoa, cities he stayed in on more than one occasion; but his descriptions lack the verisimilitude of his evocative accounts of the Hudson River Valley. This may in part explain why a critic for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (September 1824) found Tales of a Traveller to be derivative, except for the concluding stories set in America, which were “not only worth the bulk of it five hundred times over, but really, and in every respect, worthy of the author and his fame.”
8 (p. 346) About six miles ... within its clutches: This description of the strait at the mouth of the East River, which provides access to Long Island Sound from New York Harbor, provides the frame-narrative for the fourth part of Tales of a Traveller. Irving uses it to establish the narrative voice of Diedrich Knickerbocker (fictional narrator of A History of New York), with his characteristic allusions to classical antiquity and New York’s Dutch colonial history.
9 (p. 349) Kidd the Pirate: “Kidd the Pirate” is a second frame-narrative for the fourth part of Tales; it is designed to bridge the gap between history and fiction. Irving begins with a popular history of William “Captain” Kidd (c.1645-1701), a Scottish privateer who was ultimately convicted of piracy and murder and hung for his crimes in London. This history provides the basis for the stories that follow.
10 (p. 355) The Devil and Tom Walker: This is one of the few stories Irving sets in New England. Walker’s encounter with the Devil in the swamps of Back Bay perhaps anticipates Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” but Irving’s characteristic vein of light humor sets a very different tone than Hawthorne’s puritan sensibility.
A History of New York
1 (p. 369) The following work ... : Irving first published A History of New York in 1809, but he significantly revised it on five separate occasions throughout his career, culminating with the Author’s Revised Edition of 1848. This last version is the one included in this edition, and as it reflects Irving’s later style and political sensibilities, it has been placed at the end of the volume. The selections included here are designed to introduce readers to the major historical figures around whom Irving chose to organize his work: Oloff Van Cortlandt, founder of the Dutch colony at Manhattan, and the