Ranging from macabre fantasies to fairy tales and tales of crime, these stories from the author of The Nutcracker create a rich fictional world. Hoffman paints a complex vision of humanity, where people struggle to establish identities in a hostile, absurd world."The editors have made an excellent selection, and the result is a book of great distinction."—Denis Donoghue, New York Review of Books"The translators have proved fully equal to all the challenges o...

On Christmas Eve, Marie finds a Nutcracker doll among the family’s gifts and is charged by her parents to take special care of it. Under the cover of darkness, the Nutcracker comes to life, along with an evil Mouse King with seven heads, introducing Marie to the magical world of toys, and the brave Nutcracker who will change her life forever.E. T. A. Hoffman’s timeless and whimsical tale has become a Christmas classic since it was first published in 1816. It has been adapted numero...

What if a simple Christmas toy could open the door to a world of magic, danger, and unforgettable adventure? ✨ In The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, E. T. A. Hoffmann invites readers into a dazzling realm where toys come to life, dreams blend with reality, and the courage of a young girl transforms everything she believes. Follow Marie as she discovers the secret world hidden behind her beloved Nutcracker—a world filled with shimmering palaces, midnight battles, and a tyrannical Mouse King...

"Strange man, how can you have eyes for sale? Eyes? Eyes?" 'The disturbing tale of a young man's obsession with the Sandman, stealer of eyes, which has inspired writers from Sigmund Freud to Neil Gaiman.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - i...

One of five beloved Christmas classicsWritten in 1816 by one of the leaders of German Romanticism for his children, nephews, and nieces, The Nutcracker captures better than any other story a child’s wonder at Christmas. The gift of a handsomely decorated nutcracker from a mysterious uncle sets the stage for a Christmas Eve like no other for the little girl Marie. That night, Marie’s extraordinary present comes to life, defends her from the taunting Mouse K...

The Entail by E. T. A. Hoffmann is offered here in a clean English digital edition prepared for fluent ebook reading. The work stands within classics and gives modern readers direct access to a public-domain classic with navigable structure and a restrained typographic presentation. The opening pages establish the book's atmosphere with this first movement: Not far from the shore of the Baltic Sea is situated the ancestral castle of the noble family Von R—— called R— sitten. It is a wild a...

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is a Christmas Classic written in 1816, by E. T. A. Hoffmann on which the famous ballet The Nutcracker is based. In the story young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls. The story begins on Christmas Eve at the Stahlbaum house. Marie, seven, and her brother, Fritz, eight, sit outside the parlor speculating about what ...

Hoffmann's stories highly influenced 19th-century literature, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.Hoffmann is one of the best-known representatives of German Romanticism, and a pioneer of the fantasy genre, with a taste for the macabre combined with realism that influenced such authors as Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, Charles Dickens, Charles Baudelaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka and Alfred Hitchcock.Hoffmann's work makes a considerable contribu...

This selection of Hoffmann's finest short stories vividly demonstrates his intense imagination and preoccupation with the supernatural, placing him at the forefront of both surrealism and the modern horror genre. Suspense dominates tales such as Mademoiselle de Scudery, in which an apprentice goldsmith and a female novelist find themselves caught up in a series of jewel thefts and murders. In the sinister Sandman, a young man's sanity is tormented by fears about a mysterious chemist, while...

Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion - Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser and brawler, and the moody, hypochondriac genius Kreisler. In his exuberant and bizarre novel, Hoffmann brilliant...

The classic Christmas story comes to new life in this vibrant graphic novel adaptation of the beloved E.T.A. Hoffmann classic, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.**Of all the gifts under the tree on Christmas Eve, only one captures Marie Stahlbaum’s heart: a humble nutcracker.He’s a curious little man, with kind eyes, sweet red cheeks, and a friendly appearance.And as midnight nears, he comes to life, revealing a fairy-tale world of magic an...

E. T. A. Hoffmann is seen as a pioneer of both Romanticism and fantasy literature, and his novella, Mademoiselle de Scudéri: A Tale from the Times of Louis XIV is often cited as the first ever detective story. Hoffman's story 'The Sandman' provided both the inspiration for Léo Delibes's ballet Coppélia, and the basis for a highly influential essay by Sigmund Freud, called 'The Uncanny'. Indeed, Freud referred to Hoffman as the "unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature." Many of the d...