The story “Don Juan” was first published in the Leipzig “General Musical Newspaper”, and was later included by Hoffmann in the first volume of “Fantasies in the Manner of Callot”. Jacques Callot (1592–1635) was a French artist who greatly influenced Hoffmann, who first became acquainted with a collection of his prints in Bamberg. Hoffmann was especially close to the early period of Callot’s work, when the artist discovered a passion for caricatured and fantastic depictions of the world of people and animals, and became a master of the grotesque. The story was written in the form of a letter to a friend on behalf of a traveling enthusiast, a romantic and dreamer in love with music, inspired by a production of Mozart’s opera "Don Giovanni" on the stage of the Bamberg theater.