E. T. A. Hoffmann ~6 hr read

A monk drinks a forbidden devil's elixir and is loosed into a nightmare of doubles, madness, murder, and inherited sin.

E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1815 'The Devil's Elixirs' is a landmark German gothic novel of the doppelgänger, blending horror, the uncanny, and religious dread. Dark, hallucinatory, hugely influential. Read it for a founding masterpiece of gothic horror, feverish and strange, from a titan of the fantastic.

In its time

Published in 1815, during the 1810s, frankenstein's decade.

Reading it

~6 hr read (a novel-length work, settle in).

Illustrated by

Ernst Stern