by Washington Irving

7Vashington Irving was born in New York in 1783. He was strongly influenced by the Dutch culture of that area, which maintained a distinctive identity into the early 1800s. Successfully integrating both European and American elements into his stories, he gained an international reputation as the first distinctively American writer. Irving lived abroad from 1815 to 1832; "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was first published while the author lived in England. Although the story is set shortly after the Revolutionary War, Irving's characters draw on traditions of the pre-Revolutionary days of the colonial English and Dutch in his home state of New York.

Events in History at the Time the Short Story Takes Place

Regional conflict. In colonial America, the region that is now the state of New York was first settled by the Dutch and called New Netherland. In...