Charles Fenno Hoffman

Charles Fenno Hoffman ( born February 7, 1806 New York, † June 7, 1884 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) was an American author and journalist. He was known in his time both as a poet and as a storyteller.

Life

Charles Fenno Hoffman was the son of a New York lawyer and studied as his father jurisprudence. He worked after his studies for three years as well as a lawyer in his hometown, then devoted himself but to literature. In 1833, he founded the influential in his time Knickerbocker Magazine, but gave his authority from later. He was editor and publisher of the Atlantic Monthly, and later for a short time the New York Mirror and the New York Literary World.

Although he had already lost a leg in childhood, he gladly lived in the wilderness, looking for adventure, then still offered the wild expanses of the West in North America.

The last 35 years of his life were spent in various mental hospitals.

Works (selection)

• A Winter in the West. . Hapers & Brothers, New York 1835 ( digitized the Internet Archive: Volume I, Volume II )
• Wild Scenes in the Forest and Prairies. 2 vols. Richard Bentley, London 1839. ( Digitized: Volume I, Volume II ) German Wild scenes in the forest and prairie, with sketches of American life. Translated by Friedrich Gerstäcker. Leipzig 1845.

• German Greyslaer: a romantic narrative of Mohawk Indians at the time of the North American War of Independence. Pforzheim, 1841.

Secondary literature

Monographs

• Homer F. Barnes: Charles Fenno Hoffman. Columbia University Press, New York 1930.

Encyclopedia Article

• Charles Fenno Hoffman. In: Rufus Wilmot Griswold: The Poets and Poetry of America. Carey and Hart, Philadelphia 1843. Pp. 259-272.
• Charles Fenno Hoffman. In: Rufus Wilmot Griswold: The Prose Writers of America. Fourth, revised edition. Parry & Mcmillan, Philadelphia, 1856. Pp. 456-462.

• Steven Fink: Hoffman, Charles Fenno. In: American National Biography Online, ( restricted access )
• Harriet F. Bergmann: Charles Fenno Hoffman. In: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 3: Antebellum Writers in New York and the South. Gale, Detroit 1979.
• Emily A. Bernhard Jackson: Charles Fenno Hoffman. In: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 250: Antebellum Writers in New York: Second Series. Gale, Detroit, 2002. Pp. 184-188.