A hapless student stumbles into a hidden world of talking snakes, fire-spirits, and a lovelorn archivist who is secretly a salamander. The Golden Flower Pot is a shimmering masterpiece of Romantic fantasy.
First published in 1814 and subtitled a modern fairy tale, this dazzling novella set in the streets of Dresden weaves the everyday and the marvellous into one enchanted whole. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), the Königsberg-born jurist and composer, was the most inventive fabulist of German Romanticism, and this is widely held to be among his finest tales.
