Biography Essay

An ironist and humorist par excellence, the prolific storyteller E. T. A. Hoffmann occupies a prominent place in the canon of nineteenth-century European literature. He is regarded today as the influential, eccentric genius of German Romanticism, whose distinctive fictional universe foreshadows late-twentieth-century sensibility. Sophisticated as well as entertaining, Hoffmann's fiction is quintessentially Romantic in thematic orientation, milieu, aesthetic and philosophical outlook, and narrative stance— and yet it also strikes contemporary readers as astonishingly modern. At the height of his writing career, Hoffmann was a best-selling author in Germany, and soon after his premature death at age forty-six he became known on the Continent through translation as the author of "weird" and fantastic tales—particularly in France and Russia, but also in England. The prominent poets and writers demonstrably inspired by Hoffmann's oeuvre include Gerard de Nerval, Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset...