Johann August Apel (17 September 1771 – 9 August 1816) was a German writer and jurist. Apel was born and died in Leipzig. Influence Die Jägerbraut was his version of "Der Freischütz", and it was published as the first story of the first volume of his and Friedrich Laun's Gespensterbuch horror anthology (1810). Friedrich Kind and Carl Maria von Weber drew on this version as the main source for the story of their opera Der Freischütz (1821). On recommendation of Carl von Brühl they abandoned their working title The Hunter's Bride to the better known title of Apel's tale. Two of his other short stories ("Die Bilder der Ahnen" and "Die schwarze Kammer") were included in Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès' Fantasmagoriana (1812), which was read by Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairmont at the Villa Diodati in Cologny, Switzerland during the Year Without a Summer, inspiring them to write their own ghost stories, including "The Vampyre" (1819), and Frankenstein (1823), which went on to shape the Gothic horror genre. "Die Bilder der Ahnen" (translated by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson in Tales of the Dead (1813) as "The Family Portraits") especially influenced Mary Shelley, who described it in her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein: Works Die Aitolier (1806) Gespensterbuch (1810–1815) with Friedrich Laun Wunderbuch volumes 1–2 (1815–1816) with Friedrich Laun Kalliroe (1806) Metrik (1814–1816) Polyidos (1805) References External links 1771 births 1816 deaths People from the Electorate of Saxony Jurists from Saxony 19th-century German novelists Writers from Leipzig German male novelists 19th-century German male writers 19th-century German writers 19th-century German jurists People educated at the St. Thomas School, Leipzig