8vo, 344 pp, (3), b/w illustrations, original cloth with tittle in black on spine, copy clean & in very good condition, Eugen Dierderichs Verlag Dussledorf-Koln, 1968.

Synopsis

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (January 24, 1776 – June 25, 1822), better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann), was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach’s famous but fictional opera The Tales of Hoffmann, and the author of the novelette The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which the famous ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppelia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote. Hoffmann’s stories were very influential during the 19th century, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.
The Life And Opinions Of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kappelmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper is a complex satirical novel by the Prussian Romantic-era author E.T.A. Hoffmann. It was first published in 1819-1821 as Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen Makulaturblättern, in two volumes. A planned third volume was never completed.[1] It was Hoffmann’s final novel and is considered his masterpiece. It reflected his concepts of aesthetics, and predated post-modern literary techniques in its unusual structure. Critic Alex Ross writes of the novel, “If the phantasmagoric ‘Kater Murr’ were published tomorrow as the work of a young Brooklyn hipster, it might be hailed as a tour de force of postmodern fiction.”