Cover via Open Library · Open Library
Key facts
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Short story
- Published in
- The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Read free · Project Gutenberg
- #64636
- Instance of
- literary work
- Author
- Washington Irving
- Country of origin
- United States
- Image
- Winkle Wyeth2.png
Show 9 more facts
- Commons category
- Rip Van Winkle
- topic's main category
- Category:Rip Van Winkle
- publication date
- 1818-00-00
- language of work or name
- English language
- title
- Rip Van Winkle
- copyright status
- public domain
- described by source
- The Nuttall Encyclopædia
- form of creative work
- short story
- native label
- Rip Van Winkle
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
"Rip Van Winkle" ( Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrɪp fɑŋ ˈʋɪŋkəl]) is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their strong liquor and falls deeply asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution.
Inspired by a conversation on nostalgia with his American expatriate brother-in-law, Irving wrote the story while temporarily living in Birmingham, England. It was published in his collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. While the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains near where Irving later took up residence, he admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Rip Van Winkle” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.