Countdown to Halloween: The Sleepy Hollow Variations

Norman Rockwell's "Ichabod Crane"

It's not often that this blog syncs so neatly with contemporary popular culture (obviously, anyway). But on Wednesday October 9th, Sleepy Hollow, a new ongoing series based (oh so loosely) on Washington Irving's 1820 story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", premieres on Universal UK. It looks delightfully gonzo: the character of Ichabod Crane (now a Revolutionary War hero, it seems) wakes up in the twenty-first century (Rip Van Winkle style - see what they did there?) to battle the headless horseman. Great television premise or the greatest television premise? I can't wait. It seems like an intriguing off-shoot of the contemporary vogue for revisiting nineteenth century moments - Hell on Wheels and Copper on the small screen, Django, Lincoln, The Lone Ranger on the big, off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more. What goes around comes around, of course - but why now, I wonder?

Regardless, this seemed like a good enough prompt to finally rope "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" into this Halloween countdown, and think a little bit about its persistence in American culture - like Norman Rockwell's great depiction of Ichabod, left. If you've never read it, here it is in an 1821 John Murray edition.

Countdown to Halloween: "The Lemur, A Halloween Divertimento" (1822)

Blackwood's Magazine was the unrivalled home of Gothic terror in the early nineteenth century, which makes it rich pickings for those looking for antiquarian thrills at this time of year. Today, however, I'm highlighting a bona fide Halloween treat from Blackwood's, in name as well as substance - "The Lemur, A Halloween Divertimento", published in both the November and December issues in 1822.

Countdown to Halloween: "The Forest Fairies' Fount" (1829)

And so it begins - with a lost gem, an early American Halloween poem from 1829 that not only connects us back to the beginning of last year's Countdown but also comes with its own sad story.

Countdown to Halloween 2013

"Autumn Leaves", John Everett Millais, 1856 (via)

The leaves are turning, the nights are drawing in - so it's time for a little antiquarian spookiness. Yes, the American Scrapbook Countdown to Halloween 2013 starts here. Last year, I had a lot of fun and learned much more than I expected. Please do revisit those posts, all available here, and make sure to catch the post that I put together for the I. B. Tauris blog summing up the experience. Who knows what this October will bring? (Apart from fewer posts, of course - that's pretty much guaranteed.) Make sure to check out some of the other blogs taking part - almost 200 of them, and counting. Stay tuned.

E.D.E.N. Southworth in London

E.D.E.N. Southworth has been claiming my attention this summer. I revisited The Hidden Hand and, unexpectedly, was very happy to be able to use it for a chapter I was writing on highwayman Joseph Thompson Hare that should see the light of day at some point in 2014. Then, apropos of not very much except the need to scratch an itch, I got hold of a copy of E.D.E.N. Southworth: Recovering a Nineteenth-Century Popular Novelist (University of Tennessee Press), a great collection of essays edited by Melissa Homestead and Pamela Washington. What it revealed, amongst many other things, was how little I really knew about Southworth's extraordinary career, and how much of her work stills awaits recovery. Inspiring, and highly recommended.

During the course of these meanderings, I came across one particular surprise that I couldn't ignore: Southworth lived in London from 1859 to 1862. I knew that Southworth had been popular on this side of the Atlantic, of course, but I didn't know that she'd actually been a resident.