Mademoiselle de Scudéri

E. T. A. Hoffmann's novella, "Mademoiselle de Scudéri. A Tale from the Times of Louis XIV" ["Das Fräulein von Scuderi. Erzählung aus dem Zeitalter Ludwig des Vierzehnten"], was first published in 1819 in "Yearbook for 1820. Dedicated to Love and Friendship" ["Taschenbuch für das Jahr 1820. Der Liebe und Freundschaft gewidmet"]. It later was included in the third volume of the four-volume collection of novellas and fairytales that was published between 1819 and 1821 under the title "The Serapion Brethren" ["Die Serapionsbrüder"]. The 1819 edition was an immediate commercial and critical success and led to Hoffmann's becoming a popular and well-paid author (Feldges & Stadler 1986, 153). The novella still is widely regarded as one of Hoffmann's best, not only because of its exciting, suspenseful plot and interesting descriptions of life, places, and people in late 17th-century Paris but also because of the many different levels of interpretation that it allows (Feldges & Stadler 1986, 158–167; Kaiser 1988, 75).