In The Sketch-Book (1820-21), Irving explores the uneasy relationship of an American writer to English literary traditions. In two sketches, he experiments with tales transplanted from Europe, thereby creating the first classic American short stories, Rip Van Winkle, and The Legend of SleepyHollow. Based on Irving's final revision of his most popular work, this new edition includes comprehensive explanatory notes of The Sketch-Book's sources for the modern reader.

Susan Manning is a University Lecturer in English at Cambridge, and a Fellow of Newnham college. She has published widely on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and Scottish writing, including the critical study, The Puritan-Provincial Vision (1990). She has edited Walter Scott's Quentin Durward in World's Classics