Ludwig Tieck 3 hr 59 min read

The Elves, The Fair-Haired Eckbert, The Runenberg, dark and dreamlike tales of enchantment and dread from a founding master of German Romantic fantasy, gathered in English.

Ludwig Tieck's tales (this 1845 English selection from the 'Phantasus') are cornerstones of the Romantic fantastic and the literary fairy tale. Eerie, poetic, profoundly influential. Read it for the work of a writer who helped invent modern fantasy, uncanny stories of forests, elves, and the perilous border between the human and the magical.

In its time

Published in 1845, during the 1840s, mystery, mesmerism, and the proto-scientific tale in the age of poe and gautier.

Reading it

3 hr 59 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).