SOURCE: "Vittoria Accorombona: The Literary Works of the Later Dresden Years," in Ludwig Tieck: A Literary Biography, Clarendon Press, 1985, pp. 304-31.

In the following excerpt, Paulin provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of Tieck's later short fiction.

There were some works written in Tieck's later years in Dresden which were mere passing reactions to the 'charivari of the times', others a proof that a seasoned practitioner could write a Novelle with his little finger if he needed the money. Sometimes, the chance to write a preface for a friend's work or for one of the many translations he superintended, gave him the opportunity for extemporized literary criticism, most of it highly readable, much of it very percipient.

From the later 1820s until the 1840s, Tieck lent his name to Friedrich von Uechtritz, or Anton Dietrich, or Eduard von Büllow, or to the memory of his sister or...