Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, better known by his pen name E. T. A. Hoffmann, was a Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. Hoffmann's stories were tremendously influential in the 19th century, and he is one of the key authors of the Romantic movement. His work influenced such authors as Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), Charles Dickens (1812–1870), Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), and Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Hoffmann's work illuminates the darker side of the human spirit found behind the hypocritical harmony of bourgeois life, yet his wide-ranging influence upon and creative significance within the later German romantic period is frequently underestimated.

Jacques Offenbach's masterwork, the opera Les contes d'Hoffmann ("The Tales of Hoffmann", 1881), is based on the stories Der Sandmann ("The Sandman", 1816), Rath Krespel ("Councillor Krespel", 1818), and Das verlorene Spiegelbild ("The Lost Reflection") from Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht ("The Adventures of New Year's Eve", 1814). Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (1892) is based on a story by Hoffmann.... More • http://en.wikipedia. ... TA_Hoffman View • Books • Images • Videos • Search Related • Composers • Germany • Industrial Revolution • Literature • Music • Romantic • Romantics • Writers • People