In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, Ludwig Tieck wrote his first datable literary texts. This early work is remarkable in two respects: as a multifaceted reflection of German literature at the end of the 18th century and as a powerful precursor to Tieck's central early Romantic writings. The texts gathered in this volume form a spiritual unity and already demonstrate the specific interplay of pure poetic artistic enthusiasm and conceptual-rationalist art criticism that characterizes Tieck. Even today, the speed and confidence with which the young Tieck evolves from an amateur to a professional author, soon successful with the public, is astonishing; the peculiar intertwining of bleak and desperate moods, fateful entanglements, and disastrous secrets with the theme continues to fascinate.