Irving felt his new stories to be “some of the best things I have ever written. Tales of a Traveller (1824), written after a year-long stay in Germany, is a pivotal work in Irving’s career, marking his last experiment with fiction before he turned to the writing of history, biography, and adaptation of folktales. They include “Dolph Heyliger,” the story of a New Yorker who encounters a haunted house, ghosts, and a buried treasure, and its famous sequel, “The Storm Ship,” an American version of the legend of the Flying Dutchman. Interspersed with witty, evocative sketches of country life among the English nobility is the well-known tale “The Stout Gentleman” and stories based on English, French, and Spanish folklore, vividly recounted with Irving’s inimitable blend of elegance and colloquial dash. Written at the peak of his popularity, these three works reveal Irving’s remarkable diversity, his skill at adapting European legends to his own style, and the talent for entertainment that made him America’s first literary celebrity.īracebridge Hall (1822) was published, like The Sketch Book, under the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon, and centers on an English manor, its inhabitants, and the tales they tell. He went on to transform what he found into an array of short pieces that sparkle with humor, adventure, mystery, and romance. His success and his fascination with folklore traditions prompted him to travel in Europe in search of material for further tales. With The Sketch Book, Irving became a world-famous writer, lionized in French and English society and admired by Scott and Byron. This second Library of America volume of Washington Irving brings together for the first time three collections of his stories and sketches. Our route lay through old Alcala de Guadaira (Alcala on the river Aira), the benefactress of Seville, that supplies it with bread and water.Save $50 when you purchase all three Irving volumes. Thus equipped and attended, we cantered out of "Fair Seville city" at half-past six in the morning of a bright May day, in company with a lady and gentleman of our acquaintance, who rode a few miles with us, in the Spanish mode of taking leave.
E, and every meal is in itself an achievement! Let others repine at the lack of turnpike roads and sumptuous hotels, and all the elaborate comforts of a country cultivated and civilized into tameness and commonplace but give me the rude mountain scramble the roving, haphazard, wayfaring the half wild, yet frank and hospitable manners, which impart such a true game flavor to dear old romantic Spain!
0 kommentar(er)
