This will be the first book on a single German Romantic writer, E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), using the neglected critical frameworks of Anglophone and German literary disability theory. Hoffmann is highly significant for psychoanalytical theory, as Sigmund Freud drew directly on his tale ‘The Sandman’ for his ideas on the Uncanny, the castration complex, and the subconscious. My proposed study of Hoffmann’s narratives widens the focus to cognitive, physical, sensory, and developmental disabilities, and centres disability as a key Romantic experience which positions disability in relation to creative innovation, ethical behaviour, subject positions, and enforced normativity.