"Rip Van Winkle" is considered by some critics to be one of the finest early American short stories, is a short story by American autor Irving Washington, published in 1819 as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon Gent. Although the story is set in New York s Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills." Rip Van Winkle, a lazy American man, wanders off one day with his dog Wolf into the Catskill mountains where he runs into an odd group of men drinking and playing bowls. He drinks some of their mysterious brew and passes out. When he wakes up under a tree he is astonished to find that 20 years have passed and things are a lot different. This is a charming story about how America changed due to the cival war, only in a different and more subtle way than ever told before.