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Section 1: Pages 28-32

• The following version of this book was used to create this Lesson Plan: Irving, Washington. "Rip Van Winkle," in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Penguin Books, 1988.

• The reader is told by a third-person narrator (Crayon) that the story about to be related is from the papers of a historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker, who collected history not "so much among books as among men" (28), specifically from the wives of the "old burghers" (28).

• Knickerbocker compiled a complete and authoritative account of the Dutch history of the New York area.

• Although his history upset some people, he was generally respected and beloved, and his face is now enshrined in a stamp that local bakers use to imprint their "new year cakes" (28).

• A quotation of a few lines from a William Cartwright play follows. In this quotation, the speaker swears by "Wodon, God of Saxons" to always tell...

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