Rip Van Winkle Rip Van Winkle "Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains and wakes up 20 years later, having missed the American Revolution. Irving wrote it while living in Birmingham, England, as part of the collection "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." The story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, but Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills." "Rip Van Winkle" is set
Tartary stream. But all the Tartar camp along the stream Was hush'd, and still the men were plunged in sleep." In Walter de la Mare's poem "If I were lord of Tartary", Tartary is an imaginary land full of happiness. In Washington Irving's short story "Rip Van Winkle", the title character would "sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance". Tartary Tartary (Latin: "Tartaria") or Great Tartary (Latin: "Tartaria Magna") was a historical region in northern and central Asia stretching eastwards from the Caspian Sea and from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific