E.T.A. Hoffmann

Jan 15, 2025 | lrb.co.uk | E.T.A. Hoffmann |Jack Zipes |Polly Dickson |Peter Wortsman

Having reached​ a point in his career when he could swat away the advances made by editors of literary magazines, E.T.A. Hoffmann asked a particularly demanding publisher to disabuse himself of the ‘unfortunate notion that I am suffering from a writer’s diarrhoea whereby, with every evacuation, some little story or novel makes its exit!’ In the same letter, written in January 1822, a few months before his death, Hoffmann called this ‘mechanical’ writing.