Weird Tales (Vol. 1&2)

Hoffman's "Weird Tales" is a brilliant collection of his best works, including the world-known stories like "Mademoiselle De Scuderi," "The Nutcracker and The Mouse King," and also one of the first horror stories in the romantic literature "The Sandman." Hoffman's protagonists are romantic and brave representatives of the epoch. He writes about artists, musicians, poets, and also noble people of trade. His characters live in the era when men fight on duels and women faint to stress their fragility. The range of his characters is stunning. It includes the lady detective Mademoiselle De Scuderi, a mysterious Sandman who steals the eyes of those who don't want to go to bed, and an opera singer Signor Formica. Each of the presented stories has a unique character and belongs to the most valuable pieces of the world's literature that never cease to be topical, intriguing, captivating, and inspiring.

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776–1822) was a German Romantic writer and composer. He specialized in fantasy and Gothic horror stories, although he also was one of the first authors to create detective stories. Hoffman was born to a family of lawyers. His life and future career were predetermined from the start, but he fell in love with classic German literature in his youth, which became his occupation. He received a brilliant education listening to the most prominent lecturers of the time, including Immanuel Kant. Many of Hoffman's works belong to the renowned masterpieces of world literature. His stories inspired many other literary, art, and science work. Tchaikovsky borrowed the subject of Hoffman's "Nutcracker and the Mouse King" for his famous opera "Nutcracker," Léo Delibes based his ballet Coppélia on Hoffman's "Sandman," and Sigmund Freud used the same work for his essay "The Uncanny."