| Title | : | Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0140367713 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780140367713 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 175 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1820 |
Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories Reviews
-
Read for a challenge, have not read these since high school. Really enjoyed them
-
The first American writer with his classic American folktales. Irving has a large vocabulary, indicative of his time, but his writing was very easy for me to get through and was quite enjoyable.
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" actually take place in America (or, I suppose, the New World). These two have the most compelling premises and Irving concentrates on the setting and atmosphere to great effect. As a result, he's created a rich glimpse into early American identity.
As a literature nerd, I feel lucky to have read "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" while sitting in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I learned about Irving's life while taking a nighttime tour of the cemetery and visiting his grave.
"The Spectre Bridegroom" takes place in Germany, and "The Pride of the Village" takes place in Britain. They are weaker stories, with less plot development and thinner characters. "Mountjoy" does take place in the Hudson Valley, but there is almost no setting description. The whole thing basically takes place in the character's head, and there is no ending. -
Includes 5 short stories. Refreshed my memory of Rip Van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Had never read Specter Bridegroom, Pride of the Village, or Mountjoy but they were interesting.
Mostly, Irving used so many wonderful words that you don't hear in conversations anymore. I found myself looking up their definitions in the hope I can throw those words out there for my kids ;-) -
Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories
By: Washington Irving
This edition, from the "father" of American literature, contains the following classic short stories:
Rip Van Winkle,
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
The Spectre Bridegroom,
Mountjoy.
The first two stories have some touch of the supernatural. For example, Rip Van Winkle meets a strange man in the forest and helps him bring the wine kegs to his fellowmen, where he drinks and falls asleep for about twenty years. While, in Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane comes across a legendary spectre of headless horseman; when he was returning depressed after being rejected by a fair young lady.
The Spectre Bridegroom was short and romantic in its own way.
Whereas in Mountjoy, a youth of nearly twenty describes his indlugences for Metaphysics and Philosophy, where he thinks himself a great philosopher till he persues the love of his imaginary lady and finally meets her, thanks to the destiny. And when he discusses his ideas and doctrines with her and her family, especially his father, he gets to know that he is standing mere at the threshold of knowledge and he has a long way to seek it further in a systemmatic way.
Overall, it was somewhat an average read and enjoyable. -
I purchased this book years ago with the idea of reading it during the month of October. Octobers came and Octobers went and I never manged to get to it. Until now. Other than being familiar with the Disney cartoon version of The Legend of Sleepy Hallow and reading picture books of Rip Van Winkle as a child, I have had no real exposure to Washington Irving. I have to say that I have missed out!
Irving is a witty story teller and I very much enjoyed this book. Do not let Disney provide for you your Irving education! (You can enjoy Disney too though... I don't mind.) This book was good fun. And I have a new, jolly author to enjoy! -
I enjoyed "Rip Van Winkle" and "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" but I found the other stories to be a little dull. This could very well be because the narrator was somewhat dull and I often found my mind wandering.
-
Washington Irving is one of my all time short story authors and so for the month of October I had to reread some of his classics. This book is a collection of his great works of folklore which I just love. Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Specter Bridegroom, The Pride of The Village and Mountjoy! I love them all and definitely recommend them. A wonderful book to read around the Autumn/Halloween season.
-
Overall I didn't like his writing style, I didn't really like that he was the narrator telling you a story instead of you being in the story and most of his stories just rubbed me the wrong way. I really didn't like the way he talked about women. They were all "sweet untouched flowers" or "old ugly shrew"
Rip Van Winkle: Wow this was strange. I didn't get the point was it just suppose about doing anything to get away from your wife? He was a lazy young man that would do literally anything to not do any of his own work and one day goes for a walk and meet a strange man who gives him a strange drink and makes Rip Van Winkle sleep for 20 (or around that) years. I mean he slept through his wife's death and felt relieved. I didn't get it nor did I like it!
The Spectre Bridegroom: This one was cute. It is a story of a misunderstanding where a groom heading to meet his future bride is killed and using his dying breath to tell another man to tell the family of his bride to be that he has died and while that man goes to deliver his messages is mistaken for the groom. After meeting the young girl that the dead man was to marry he fell in love with her. I think the story would have been better if the reader didn't know from the beginning that the man who went to meet with the family wasn't the intended bridegroom and if the reader was ticked into think he was actually a ghost.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: This was nothing like how I thought it would be! I have seen adaptions of this story and they make it seem more like a ghost story than it actually is! It's all just a prank because two men were fighting over which would marry the heiress. This took too long to get to the point and Ichabod only really thought about food.
The Adventure of the German Student: Um ok necrophilia, why?
The Devil and Tom Walker: I liked this one it about if you are a shitty person going to church won't save you from the devil if you continue to be a shit person, you have to do good works to be a good person.
The Adventure of the Mason: I liked this one, it shows that sometime it pays to do just an honest day's work (and then some shady shit)
The Legend of the Rose of Alhambra: I kinda like this one it was a love story kinda, it was about a girl who is heartbroken getting a magic lute that wins her fame and reunites her with her true love. It was kinda cute but I think she forgave her lover way too quickly
The Governor and the Notary: Didn't get this one at all.
Governor Manco and the Soldier: I didn't get the point the soldier was imprisoned for making an outrageous story about how he ends up with some money and ends up seducing the Governor handmaiden to get out and runs away with her. It was meh -
Short story collection here. I will have to look further into the father of American Literature for more extensive exposure. "Rip..." and "Sleepy Hollow" I was, or course, familiar with but the other selections not. They contain involved descriptions of upstate New York and the Hudson region long ago, during the time of the Dutch settlers, but after our Revolution. Two other shorts take place back in Europe.
Some quotes to remember:
"Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals of foolish, well-oiled dispositions who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound."
"Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a shad tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use."
"Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighbourhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favourite scene of her gambols."
"However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative - to dream dreams and see apparitions."
"...for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosome4d in the great State of New York, that population, manners, and customs remain fixed; while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. Theya re like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbour, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current."
"Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighbourhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities."
"The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favourite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement."
"On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grapevines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate Andre was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark."
"He never even talked of love; but there are modes of making it more eloquent than language, and which convey it subtilely and irresistibly to the heart. The beam of the eye, the tone of the voice, the thousand tendernesses which emanate from every word and look and action - these form the true eloquence of love, and can always be felt and understood."
"I pictured to myself, with curious logic, the form of the unseen musician. Such melodious sounds and exquisite inflections could only be produced by organs of the most delicate flexibility. Such organs do not belong to coarse, vulgar forms; they are the harmonious results of fair proportions and admirable symmetry. A being so organized must be lovely."
"...poetry is one of the most pleasing studies that can occupy a youthful mind. It renders us susceptible of the gentle impulses of humanity, and cherishes a delicate perception of all that is virtuous and elevated in morals, and graceful and beautiful in physics."
"Mr. Somerville had mingled much with the world, and with what is termed fashionable society. He had experienced its cold elegancies and gay insincerities; its dissipation of the spirits and squanderings of the heart. Like many men of the world, though he had wandered too far from nature ever to return to it, yet he had the good taste and good feeling to look back fondly to its simple delights, and to determine that his child, if possible, should ne4ver leave them."
"I have had many opportunities of seeing the progress through life of young men who were accounted geniuses, and have found it too often end in early exhaustion and bitter disappointment; and have as often noticed that these effects might be traced to a total want of system. there were no habits of business, of steady purpose, and regular application, superinduced upon the mind; everything was left to chance and impulse, and native luxuriance, and everything of course ran to wasted and wild entanglement." -
I picked this audio book up from the library because one of the short stories on it was The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which is our bookclub selection for the month. I enjoyed the entire collection of short stories on this CD; they were lightly spooky and a perfect Halloween-time read. I really liked Washington Irving's writing style, and I could just imagine readers in his day delightfully frightened at his suspenseful and clever stories and anticipating new releases. He has a way of writing in which the reader feels like he is hearing the story told by an actual witness of events. I particularly liked the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and I appreciated reading the original story that has inspired so many adaptations.
-
I've been letting people vote on what I listen to in the car. I'll give 3 or 4 choices and a couple days on Facebook, and then pop in whatever the consensus is.
I think I would have liked Washington Irving quite a bit more if I would have read him instead of listened to him. There were several points where I lost focus early on, tried backing up the CD, promptly lost focus again, and remained lost the rest of the way through.
I enjoyed immensely those stories with which I was already familiar: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Devil and Tom Walker, and Rip Van Winkle.
I'll come back and give the other stories a chance sometime. I just have to remember to sit down and read them. -
I found it interesting the story that gives its name to this book was one of the shorter ones. I have to say I liked the idea behind the first few stories but I just couldn't get my head round the writing style, my just wanted to wonder. I read all the stories but feel maybe I should give them another chance at some point.
-
Most people are familiar with with the story of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow especially around Halloween. Then comes the story of Rip van Winkle. The remaining three stories: The Spectre Bridegroom, The Pride of the Village and Mountjoy.
The Spectre Bridegroom has the spooky feeling that the title conveys although there is a sad circumstance, it ends with a happily-ever-after.
The Pride of the Village was a typical story. Nothing surprising.
Mountjoy was basically a first-person character relating how intelligent and well-educated he is. He is an arrogant twit - for the most part - happily living in the delusion of his own superiority.
The overall style of narration seemed to drift off into side trips that seem like more extraneous wordage than actually necessary to the development of the story. But that is more likely due to the time-period Irving was writing in. -
A fun, quick paced read.
It’s a mix of folk stories from the early U.S. and from Spain. I knew Rip van Winkle and Ichabod Crane from my childhood, but never straight from the author’s own words. The early stories are good for pretty much any age, maybe depending on the sensitivities of the child and how they would feel about headless horsemen and people making deals with the devil, but to me it was a pretty gentle level of creepy. The latter stories mig not hold younger kids’ attention quite so well, but they’re still interesting. I’d let my older kids read/hear any of them, but might just stick with Rip and Ichabod for the ones under 10.
I find that I like Washington’s writing quite bit, he’s pretty straightforward and to the point with his storytelling, but can be a little more flowery and pretty with his descriptions and vocabulary, maybe somewhere between Twain and Dickens. -
I listened to this one on MP3 disk, 56 tracks, but that edition is not shown here, so I’m reviewing the audio CD version here. Of the stories, most Americans are probably familiar with Rip VanW. L.O. Sleepy Hollow, and Devil and Tom Walker, but the other three included in this collection are also rather intriguing, they’re just set in Europe (one overheard in Holland, told by a Swede, and takes place in Germany, and the other two both take place in Spain and there’s at least one character that pops up in both of them). The reader does a reasonably good job, but not enough to make a deep impression. What I can recommend about this is that the stories are unabridged. When I read those two most famous stories in kids’ books they didn’t always include Diedrich Knickerbocker’s end notes. This version does.
-
3.5 stars
This was a collection of short stories. I was most looking forward to reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It was interesting reading the short story of a well-loved cartoon that I grew up on. We follow Icabod Crane and his untimely demise.
The final short story was very bland and didn't really conclude of anything besides prepare for life and don't wing it.
Rip Van Winkle was the first short story; interesting yet odd. I can't say the nap didn't do him some good in regards to this wife.
I was pleasantly surprised by The Spectre Bridegroom, but kind of wished it went the way I was hoping instead on the predictable outcome.
All in all and enjoyable collection. -
This short collection of Irving's literary romances (not romance genre) includes Rip Van Winkle (shallow, the premise of sleeping 20 years is basically the whole story), The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (boring and filled with extraneous details, with the headless horsement barely making an appearance...or not), The Spectre Bridegroom (best of the bunch, a pretty good ghost story with a twist), The Pride of the Village (a romance that ends in tragedy, but pretty thin stuff), and Mountjoy (a tedious take on a young man's love for love and learning, that is really no story at all). I guess I can say I've read Washington Irving now - stories that are 200 years old. But really, I wasn't impressed.
-
Multiple, disparate editions of this book are jumbled together on Goodreads; here are the contents of the Junior Deluxe Edition volume:
Rip Van Winkle
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Dolph Heyliger
The Legend of the Storm-Ship
Kidd the Pirate (nonfiction)
The Devil and Tom Walker
Philip of Pokanoket (nonfiction; about King Philip's War)
The Early Experiences of Ralph Ringwood (nonfiction; about youth of Florida Governor William Duval)
The Phantom Island
The Adalantado of the Seven Cities -
The stories within this collection are decent but are thoroughly marked as a product of the time they were written in. There is a particular paragraph in Sleepy Hollow, that is designed to be judgment of a woman's promiscuous ways, but with today's standard about what is and what is not modest for a woman to wear, the passage only comes off as laughable, or an attempt at a bad joke.
These "anachronisms" (by lack of a better word) do not however lessen my enjoyment of the story, to the contrary, they enhance them in a way Washington Irving could never have accounted for. -
First published in this form in 1905, 'Rip Van Winkle and other stories' is a collection of 5 short stories published as far back as 1820. Most of the stories have been reprinted many times in many other publications - this is certainly true of 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow', and I have certainly come across 'The Spectre Bridegroom' before so I guess the two others are popular as well. Because they are all great tales, and deserve to be reprinted.
-
This book of short stories had several exceptionally good ghost stories. Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are well known. The third, The Devil and Tom Walker was my favorite of the three for it's incisive critique of false piety.
The other stories in this collection, while well written, did not capture my imagination as much. -
Rip Van Winkle:
A lazy, henpecked man falls asleep in the Catskill mountains and awakens 20 years later to find his sleepy mountain town changed throughout the years of the American Revolution.
The Dutch living in the region claimed the story to be true (According to Deidrich Knickerbocker), making it perhaps one of the first American legends.
The setting also makes it seem like a story imagined in this way: "What if a man slept through the revolution? He would find the whole world so strange and utterly different when he awoke."
Either that or this is a story about how if you are lazy and henpecked, all you need to be happy is to grow past the age of impunity...
All sides considered, this is a pretty charming and intriguing story.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
Tale of an ambitious traveling school teacher who disappeared in a frightening chase after a night of telling ghost stories. Coincidentally, the young woman he was interested in married his rival.
Humorous and festive--just great storytelling. Love it.
The Spectre Bridegroom:
A castle feast is devastated and frightened to discover that the bridegroom who arrived late is dead and must hasten to his burial at the churchyard.
Creepy enough for a Hallow's Eve read, but it turns out alright in the end.
The Pride of the Village:
When a young girl becomes enamored by a traveling soldier, she dies of a broken heart when he leaves.
Mountjoy: to be continued... -
I struggled to maintain excitement through the stories I hadn't already any familiarity with. I dove into this collection with the intention to better familiarize myself with the full, original versions of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle and was able to accomplish that goal with delight.
-
Didn't really care for Sleepy Hollow, LOVED Rip Van Winkle and The Spectre Bridegroom. Too bad the former brought the rating down. It's a nice collection, but I don't think I will be coming back to Irving unless it's to reread these stories.
-
Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are the most famous of these stories. However, I think I enjoyed the others more. The Spectre Bridegroom was a fun, interesting, fascinating read. And, Mountjoy might be my favorite of the stories. It was captivating and hilarious. A great read.
-
*Reto de lectura* [39/50]
Libro para leer en Halloween
Unas buenas y otras no tanto.
la mejor sin duda es "La aventura del estudiante alemán" -
I got this book from a second hand shop in Inverness, Scotland.
Read it in the Netherlands.
It was a nice book to read.
