About this ebook
Once Marie discovers how the Nutcracker came to be cursed, she has many decisions to make. Will she help the Nutcracker defeat the Mouse King? Will she help break his curse? And will she return to the magical kingdom, populated by dolls, to be with her beloved Nutcracker?
In this unabridged edition, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s timeless fantasy leaps from the page as the author originally intended. Discover his rich and enchanting world in this new English translation.
About the author
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, commonly abbreviated to E. T. A. Hoffmann, was born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann on 24 January 1776 in Königsberg, Prussia [now Kaliningrad, Russia]. He was a German Romantic writer, composer, and painter known for his fantasy and gothic horror stories.
Educated in law, he became a Prussian law officer in the Polish provinces, serving until the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806. Hoffmann turned to his music, and composed the ballet Arlequin and the opera Undine, and he changed his name—swapping out Wilhelm for Amadeus in homage to the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Although Hoffmann wrote two novels and more than 50 short stories, he supported himself as a legal official in Berlin. The struggle within Hoffmann between the ideal world of his art and his daily life as a bureaucrat is evident in many of his stories, in which characters are possessed by their art.
His use of fantasy served as inspiration for several composers: Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Jacques Offenbach, The Tales of Hoffmann (operas); Léo Delibes, Coppélia and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker (ballets). His taste for the macabre combined with realism influenced writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, George MacDonald, and Franz Kafka.
Hoffmann died of syphilis in Berlin on 25 June 1822.
Rachel Louise Lawrence is a British author who translates and adapts folk and fairy tales from original texts and puts them back into print, particularly the lesser-known British & Celtic variants.
Since writing her first story at the age of six, Rachel has never lost her love of writing and reading. A keen wildlife photographer and gardener, she is currently working on several writing projects.
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