Weird Tales, Vol. II (Of 2)

A compendium of really weird tales written in 1885 by E.T.A. Hoffmann, who was a Prussian Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. The title of this volume 'Weird Tales' inspired a horror magazine to adopt the same title for it.

WHAT THE MOON SAW AND OTHER TALES

This volume was intended as a sequel to Andersen?s 1864 Stories and Tales (see end pages of this book) and was aimed at slightly older children. This book of fairy tales and stories deals with more complex moral questions, without sacrificing Andersen?s characteristic imaginative and fantasy elements. The series of sketches of varying lengths in this book arose from the Andersen?s experiences when as a youth he went to seek his fortune Copenhagen, in the capital of his native land; and the story entitled "Under the Willow Tree" is said likewise to have its foundation in fact. Containing 45 stories and tales, it is Illustrated with 80 woodcuts done by the brothers Dalziel, from illustrations by Alfred Water Bayes. Some of the stories in this volume are: * What the Moon Saw * The Story of the Year * The Goblin and the Huckster * In a Thousand Years * The Bond of Friendship * Jack the Dullard * Under the Willow Tree * The Beetle * A Leaf from the Sky * The Dumb Book; plus many, many more. So, we invite you to download this ebook, find a comfy chair and settle in to be entertained for hours. 10% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities. ?---------------------------- KEYWORDS/TAGS: ?Folklore, fairy tales, myths, legends, folk tales, children?s stories, bedtime, fables, culture, cultural, What the Moon Saw, Story of the Year, Good for Nothing, Difference, Everything, Right Place, Goblin, Huckster, Thousand Years, Bond, Friendship, Jack the Dullard, Something, Under, Willow Tree, Beetle, Old Man, Always Right, Wind, Waldemar Daa, Daughters, Ib, Christine, Ole, Tower-Keeper, Bottle-Neck, Good Humour, leaf, Sky, Dumb, Book, Jewish Girl, Thorny Road, Honour, Old Gravestone, Old Bachelor, Nightcap, Marsh King, Daughter, Last Dream, Old Oak Tree, Christmas Tale, Bell-deep, Puppet Showman, Pigs, Anne Lisbeth, Charming, Duck, yard, Trod, tread, stood, Loaf, bread, Sand dunes, Bishop of Borglum, Warriors, Snow Man, Two Maidens, Farmyard Cock, Weathercock, Pen, Inkstand, Child, Grave, Soup, Sausage Peg, Wise Men, Butterfly, Uttermost, ?Parts, Sea, Ph?nix Bird, phoenix

When the King Loses His Head and Other Stories

There stood once in a public place a black tower with massive fortress-like walls and a few grim bastioned windows. It had been built by robber barons, but time swept them into the beyond, and the tower became partly a prison for dangerous criminals and grave offenders, and partly a residence. In the course of centuries new structures were added to it, and were buttressed against the massive walls of the tower and against one another; little by little it assumed the dimensions of a fair sized town set on a rock, with a broken skyline of chimneys, turrets and pointed roofs. When the sky gleamed green in the west there appeared, here and there, lights in the various parts of the tower. The gloomy pile assumed quaint and fanciful contours, and it somehow seemed that at its foot there stretched not an ordinary pavement, but the waves of the sea, the salty and shoreless ocean. And the picture brought to one's mind the shapes of the past, long since dead and forgotten.An immense ancient clock, which could be seen from afar, was set in the tower. Its complicated mechanism occupied an entire story of the structure, and it was under the care of a one-eyed man who could use a magnifying glass with expert skill. This was the reason why he had become a clockmaker and had tinkered for years with small timepieces before he was given charge of the large clock. Here he felt at home and happy. Often, at odd hours, without apparent need he would enter the room where the wheels, the gears and the levers moved deliberately, and where the immense pendulum cleft the air with wide and even sweep.

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Travels, Vol. I (Of 2)

Whether it be that the quantity of genius among ourselves and the French, and the number of works more lasting than brass produced by it, have of late been so considerable as to make us independent of additional supplies; or that, in our ancient aristocracy of intellect, we disdain to be assisted by the Germans, whom, by a species of second sight, we have discovered, before knowing any thing about them, to be a tumid, dreaming, extravagant, insane race of mortals, -certain it is, that hitherto our literary intercourse with that nation has been very slight and precarious