August Gottlob Eberhard was born in Belzig in Brandenburg and died in Dresden. He studied theology in Halle, and then painting. At first he scratched a living engraving illustrations for botanical works, but he soon became known as a novelist, and ran a bookshop in Halle. His firm published the famous Urania by Christoph August Tiedge in 1801. Eberhard is best remembered for his poem in hexameters, Hannchen und die Küchlein, which is one of those famous children’s book meant also to be read by adults. The complete edition of his works (1830) ran to twenty volumes, although Das Feuerwerk appeared in the 1807 Leipzig almanac, Zeitung für die elegante Welt.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1999