The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a short story by the American writer Washington Irving, published in 1820 in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

The story is set in a village in the Hudson Valley and centres on Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster who has come from elsewhere and is full of superstition. The neighbourhood has legends of its own, and Ichabod believes them all thoroughly. He is courting the daughter of a wealthy farmer, which puts him in competition with a local man, and on the ride home from an evening at the farm he encounters a figure on horseback that appears to be missing its head. The tale is one of the earliest pieces of American fiction to have stayed in print continuously, and Irving wrote it while he was living in England. The story has been adapted for the screen several times, including a 1922 silent film and a 1949 Walt Disney animation that paired it with Rip Van Winkle.