The collection includes two of Irving's best-known stories, attributed to the fictional Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker: "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle".

The Sketch Book, along with James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, was among the first widely read works of American literature in Britain and Europe.

Apart from "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" – the pieces which made both Irving and The Sketch Book famous – the collection of tales includes "Roscoe", "The Broken Heart", "The Art of Book-making", "A Royal Poet", "The Spectre Bridegroom", "Westminster Abbey", "Little Britain", and "John Bull".

[2] Stories range from the maudlin (such as "The Wife" and "The Widow and Her Son") to the picaresque ("Little Britain") and the comical ("The Mutability of Literature"), but the common thread running through The Sketch Book – and a key part of its attraction to readers – is the personality of Irving's pseudonymous narrator, Geoffrey Crayon.

In the autumn of 1818, his oldest brother William, sitting as a Congressman from New York, secured for him a political appointment as chief clerk to the Secretary of the U.S. Navy, and urged Irving to return home.

[6]Irving spent late 1818 and the early part of 1819 putting the final touches on the short stories and essays that he would eventually publish as The Sketch Book through 1819 and 1820.

Irving used his brother Ebenezer and friend Henry Brevoort as his stateside emissaries, mailing packets of each installment to them for final editing and publication.

Irving was concerned about such literary piracy – "I am fearful some [British] Bookseller in the American trade may get hold of [The Sketch Book]," he told his brother in law, "and so run out an edition of it without my adapting it for the London public – or participating in the profits.

The first four American installments were collected into a single volume and self-published by Irving in London, under John Miller's Burlington Arcade imprint, on February 16, 1820.

Heartened by the enthusiastic response to The Sketch Book, Murray encouraged Irving to publish the remaining three American installments as a second volume as quickly as possible.

[14] In July 1820, Murray published the second volume of The Sketch Book, including all the pieces from the final three American installments, plus three additional essays: the American Indian sketches "Philip of Pokanoket" and "Traits of Indian Character", which Irving had originally written for the Analectic Magazine in 1814, and a short original piece, "L'Envoy", in which Irving thanked his British readers for their indulgence.

His rich, and sometimes extravagant humour, his gay and graceful fancy ... betray the author in every page; even without the aid of those minor peculiarities of style, taste, and local allusions, which at once identify the travelled Geoffrey Crayon with the venerable Knickerbocker.

[21] In American Writers (1824–25) he wrote: "The Sketch-Book—is a timid, beautiful work; with some childish pathos in it; some rich, pure, bold poetry; a little squeamish, puling, lady-like sentimentality: some courageous writing—some wit—and a world of humor".

[22] Apart from "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", both of which were immediately acknowledged as The Sketch Book's finest pieces, American and English readers alike responded most strongly to the more sentimental tales, especially "The Broken Heart", – which Byron claimed had made him weep[23] – and "The Widow and Her Son".

"Everywhere I find in it the marks of a mind of the utmost elegance and refinement," wrote the English historian William Godwin, "a thing as you know that I was not exactly prepared to look for in an American.

One of the most significant influences of The Sketch Book came from its cycle of five Christmas stories, portraying an idealized and old-fashioned Yule celebration at an English country manor.