Everyone knows the ballet; few have read the story it grew from. On Christmas Eve Marie Stahlbaum is given a wooden nutcracker, and at midnight the toys go to war with a seven-headed Mouse King. Marie wakes with a cut arm and a family who will not believe her, while her godfather Drosselmeier tells her why the Nutcracker is so ugly and the Mouse King comes for her sweets. With it, in Alexander Ewing's English of 1886, comes Hoffmann's The Stranger Child: two country children, a heap of broken presents, a tutor who may be a fly, and a playmate from the woods. A gift edition, illustrated throughout with original paintings made for this edition and set with ornamental chapter openings.
