The sand-man and other night pieces

E.T.A. Hoffmann was Germany's greatest author of fantastic and supernaturalist fiction, a composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. He was himself the subject of Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, and his work inspired Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (1892) and Delibes's ballet Coppélia (1870). Hoffmann's fiction, exploring the darker side of the human spirit, influenced Poe, Dickens, Baudelaire and Kafka. His highly readable, entertaining and eerie stories are thick with references to ghosts, madness and hypnotic influence. Supernatural and sinister characters appear in the lives of his heroes and heroines, exposing the tragic and grotesque. The Sand-Man and Other Night Pieces is the definitive collection of Hoffmann's stories of the supernatural, including classic translations by J.T. Bealby, A. Ewing and Thomas Carlyle, and adding important, more recent translations by Everett Bleiler and Helen Grant. It is edited and introduced by Jim Rockhill. Contents: 'Introduction' by Jim Rockhill, 'The Sand-Man', 'The Legacy', from The Serapion Brethren: 'A Fragment of the Lives of Three Friends', 'The Mines of Falun', 'The Singers' Contest', 'Eine Spukgeschichte', 'Automatons', 'The Life of a Well-Known Character', 'Albertine's Wooers', 'The Uncanny Guest', 'The Vampire'. 'The Cremona Violin', 'The Golden Pot', 'A New Year's Eve Adventure', 'The Abandoned House'. 'The Fiction and Collections of E.T.A. Hoffmann'.