E. T. A. Hoffmann 1 hr 33 min read

A dreamy student collides, literally, with an apple-seller's curse and tumbles into a hidden world of fairy serpents, elemental spirits, and a golden pot.

E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1814 'The Golden Pot' is his masterpiece of German Romantic fantasy, weaving the everyday and the magical inextricably together. A shimmering landmark of the fantastic. Read it for one of the founding works of literary fantasy, strange, funny, and luminous, in the original German.

In its time

Published in 1814, during the 1810s, frankenstein's decade.

Reading it

1 hr 33 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).