About the Author
Washington Irving (1783-1853) was an American author, short story writer, essayist and biographer, best known for the short stories. Irving was not interested in the meaning of nature like Emerson, self-inspection like Montaigne, or philosophical or moral questions like Bacon. His most durable and prolific fictional mask was 'Geoffrey Crayon', an observer, who is fascinated by the vanishing pasts of old Europe, the riverside Creolo villages of Louisiana, and the old Pawnee hunting grounds of Oklahoma. He is the earliest literary figure of the American abroad, who appeared in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., in which also Irving's best-known story Rip Van Winkle was included.
