It’s that time of year when our favourite Christmas stories reemerge to dominate the stage and screen. Prominent among them is The Nutcracker, a classic 19th-century tale that has been adapted in a variety of forms, but is best known as Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet.

Not many would know E.T.A. Hoffmann as the author of the original story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816), in which a child’s Christmas present comes to life. Even fewer would know much about him.

It is fair to say he is not the kind of writer some might imagine to be behind the delightful children’s fantasy of tin soldiers, armies of mice and sugar plum fairies.

Hoffmann was a German Romantic author of unnerving fairy tales and macabre fantasies.

He was born on January 24, 1776, in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) and baptised Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann. He later substituted Amadeus for Wilhelm out of admiration for Mozart.

Hoffmann had a troubled childhood that, some propose, left an enduring imprint on his art. His parents, unhappily married, had three sons. One died in infancy. The other was taken away by Hoffmann’s father when his parents separated in 1779. Hoffmann never saw his father or brother again. Critic Jack Zipes – who labels Hoffmann a “wounded storyteller” – suggests we can see Hoffmann’s absent father in many of his haunting tales.

Hoffmann was raised in his mother’s family home, under the stifling influence of the Doerffer family. His mother, suffering from chronic depression, relinquished his care to Hoffmann’s grandmother. His aunts and uncle took great pains to ensure that their nephew grew to be a solid member of the bourgeoisie. He was well versed in music; his modes of dress, speech and behaviour were heavily monitored.

Tellingly, Hoffmann broke all ties with the Doerffer family in 1800, when he passed law examinations with honours and was assigned to Posen, Poland, as a state official.

Hoffmann’s tales often rail against social and intellectual conformity, or what fellow Romantic William Blake called the “mind-forg’d manacles” of oppressive social and political systems. Hoffmann’s formative years with the Doerffer family may well have inspired this Romantic rebellion.

A difficulty to conform also permeates Hoffmann’s patchy professional life. In 1802, he lost his post in........

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