ABSTRACT
In Washington Irving’s instance the narrative mask was chosen to embrace the English contents of the book; by the time he published The Sketch Book Irving had been for four years in England on his brothers’ business, and was to remain in Europe for another fifteen; so many of the sketches are the essays of an American traveller. But there is also a slashing attack on ‘English Writers on America’, two sensitive and intelligent appreciations of American Indian manners and customs, and two short stories, ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, both apparently authenticated by footnotes tracing them to actual events in their native American setting. ‘Sublime’ and ‘beautiful’ were technical words that would have been understood by any aesthetician among Irving’s contemporary readers. What Irving is saying is that nature in America provides the full range of landscapes.
