The quiet Dutch community of Sleepy Hollow lay in the Adirondack mountains on the western shore of the mighty Hudson River in America's colonial period. The solitude of the woods was breathtaking, and not even a schoolmaster was immune from the eerie miasma which everyone knew permeated the dense forest. Written in 1820, Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has become a classic of American literature, and has been retold in many different ways. Here is the original, from Irving's own hand.