American author, short story writer, essayist, poet, travel book writer, biographer, and columnist. Irving has been called the father of the American short story. He is best known for 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' in which the schoolmaster Ichabold Crane meets with a headless horseman, and 'Rip Van Winkle,' about a man who falls asleep for 20 years. "I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories." (…showed first 75 words of 1601 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1601 total…darkened and partly changed the story. The protagonist, Ichabold Crane, is a constable from New York, not a schoolteacher. He believes in rational methods of detection, and is sent in the farming community of Sleepy Hollow in the of upstate New York to investigate three recent murders. The townspeople know who the culprit is: a long-dead Hessian mercenary nicknamed the Headless Horseman who was killed during the Revolutionary War and buried in the Western Woods.