Tales of Hoffmann (Penguin Classics)

A lawyer by day and a creator of a world of fantasy by night, Hoffman (1776-1822) lived a Jekyll and Hyde existence. Many of the characters in his stories are subject to a similar split personality.
 
The duality of his nature is frequently reflected in some of his characters—Cardillac the goldsmith in Mademoiselle de Scudéry and Nathaniel in The Sandman, for example. Cardillac is a virtuous, industrious man by day but a violent criminal at night, while Nathaniel, obsessed by a childhood fantasy, is driven to madness and cruelty.
 
These tales can be read on several levels: as an expression of the concerns of the Romantic era, as impressive examples of German Romantic literature and as exciting works of fiction made all the more extraordinary by their concern with the supernatural and the bizarre.

• The Golden Pot and Other Tales: A New Translation by Ritchie Robertson (Oxford World's Classics)
• Final Harvest: Poems
• The Marquise of O and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
• Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings (Penguin Classics)
• Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, 1789-1794 (Oxford Paperbacks)
• The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (Penguin Classics)
• Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (Signet Classics)
• Benito Cereno (Bedford College Editions)
• The Best Tales of Hoffmann
• Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)