The vintage copy of The Sketch Book by Washington Irving that I won at the thrift auction for ten bucks arrived, and it's older than I assumed: the copyright date on the illustration page is 1899.
It's a beautiful, fragile little book. I'm having fun imagining who might have bought it 126 years ago. Did you know that Charles Dickens was a huge fan of Washington Irving? Or that Irving was the one who coined the term "Gotham" for New York City?
I have never read any of the author's work, so I'm going to save this for Halloween, when I fully expected to be scared witless (again!) by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which is in this short story collection.
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