Washington Irving's masterpiece has entranced readers for over 165 years, and though many artists have illustrated this classic, none has so perfectly captured the mysterious adventures of Rip and the boisterous crew of Dutchmen as the great American artist N. C. Wyeth. In ten richly colored paintings and twenty-six vivid line drawings, Wyeth brilliantly recreated the world of eighteent-century life in the Catskill Mountains.
Join henpecked farmer Rip Van Winkle as he escapes to the hills for a day of hunting. There he meets a strange dwarf and later a group of men playing ninepins. But when Rip drinks from their keg a few times, he falls into a deep sleep and wakes to find his beard full-grown and white, his wife gone, his daughter grown and married, and the whole country changed by the Revolution.
First published in 1921 and long unavailable, here is one of the bestloved American stories as illustrated by one of the most distinguished artists of our time.
Washington Irving's 'Rip Van Winkle' originally appeared in 'The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.' (1819) alongside another evocative piece of Americana, 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' a wondrous story equally set in Irving's beloved Hudson River Valley.
Though not as multilayered as its longer and slightly more well known fellow, 'Rip Van Winkle' also has long roots in Old World folklore, which is appropriate, since 'The Sketch Book' was the first book by an American writer to be taken seriously by the European audiences that then set the standard in the West.
Written in simple but gorgeously visionary language, 'Rip Van Winkle' is the story of the lazy but warm spirited farmer, who, in an effort to escape the "petticoat despotism" of his "termagant" wife, flees for an afternoon's hunting in the lonely, autumnal Catskill Mountains.
Accompanied only by Wolf, his faithful but equally harassed dog, Rip is surprised when he notices an odd figure approaching through the wilderness and calling out his name.
The "short, square built old fellow with thick bushy hair and a grizzled beard" is carrying a "stout keg," and gestures to Van Winkle to assist him with his burden.
Taking up the "flagon," Rip hesitantly follows the little man into an isolated ravine, and thus steps unknowingly into fairyland; there he finds himself confronted by a solemn and outlandishly dressed party of dwarfs playing at ninepins. Bewildered, Rip pours out the beverage for the assemblage, but can't resist taking a drink himself.
Awaking on the mountainside, Van Winkle, finding Wolf gone and a badly rusted gun at his side, returns to town, where he discovers his home in ruins, his wife dead, his children grown to adulthood, the land of his birth now an independent nation freed from the yoke of the British, and himself a stranger to the villagers, who stare at his tattered clothing and exceptionally long facial hair.
After making bewildered inquiries, he comes to accept that twenty years have passed. As a humble, good hearted, and mild tempered dreamer, Rip is an archetypal fairytale hero, though the only dragon slain is Dame Van Winkle, and she accidentally, by the passage of time itself.
Like kindred spirit Ichabod Crane, Rip is not an absolute novice when it comes to the fantastic, for he has enjoyed telling the village children who love him "long stories about ghosts, witches, and Indians."
As in traditional Celtic fairy lore, in which eating or drinking while visiting fairyland is often punished with permanent residency there, Rip had made the honest mistake of partaking of fairy foodstuffs, and thus pays an unintended price for doing so.
For Celtic fairy lore also featured multiple variations on the theme of fairy time; one minute of perceived human time might be seven years of fairy time, and a man spending a happy week dancing in fairyland might discover that one hundred years or more has past on earth upon his return.
Whether dwarfs, elves, boggarts, or fairies, Irving's little people are first cousins to many of the mythological beings of European mythology.
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