Johannes Praetorius is best known as a compiler of folktales and popular superstitious beliefs; it was he who collected and wrote down the most influential collection of folktales about the Rübezahl, an impish spirit of the Silesian mountains. Praetorius's compilations of folk materials served as a source for writers in Germany's classical period, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and, in the romantic period, for the Grimm Brothers, Clemens Brentano, and other collectors of folk material. For his contemporaries Praetorius was a purveyor of curious lore and diverting accounts of inexplicable phenomena. He was probably one of the first Germans to make a living as a freelance writer, and many of his books would today be considered sensationalist. After his death Praetorius became linked with superstitious attitudes, and he fell from literary notice during the Enlightenment. He has been largely ignored by writers of literary history--with...