Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was a German novelist of fantasy and Gothic horror, as well as a jurist, composer, music critic, and artist. His stories serve as the foundation for Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which Hoffmann appears as the hero (albeit substantially embellished). He also wrote the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which served as the basis for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker. The ballet Coppelia is based on two additional stories by Hoffmann, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler. Hoffmann's maternal and paternal ancestors were jurists. His father, Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann (1736-97), was an attorney in Konigsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), as well as a poet and amateur violist. In 1767, he married his relative Lovisa Albertina Doerffer (1748-96). Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, born on 24 January 1776, was the youngest of three children, of whom the second died in infancy. Between 1781 and 1792, he attended the Lutheran school, or Burgschule, where he excelled in classical studies. He was taught sketching by Saemann and counterpoint by Podbileski, a Polish organist who would serve as the template for Abraham Liscot in Kater Murr.

List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Kreisleriana and The Poet and the Composer: Editor's preface to Kreisleriana and The Poet and the Composer; Part II. Music Criticism: Sources and suppositive reviews by Frederick Schnapp; Appendix; Index.