"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by American author Washington Irving first published in 1819. It tells the story of 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.