It is perhaps not the work for which Gérard de Nerval will be best remembered but, in addition to ground-breaking novels such as Sylvie, and habitually walking a pet lobster, he also wrote this excellent short story of the fantastic.
This story was first published in 1832, but I imagine that the possessed hand was a phenomenon that had existed in folk-lore for aeons, and with good reason. A vividly visual method of creating conflict between conscience and actions. (Subverted to great comic effect in “Dead End”, episode 18 of series 2, Joss Whedon’s Angel, to give one example of many subsequent ‘evil’ hands.)
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A Rat in the Book Pile 