Charles Fenno Hoffman was an American writer, poet and editor. He served as an editor of the American Monthly Magazine, the Literary World magazine, and other weekly journals, but his fame rested chiefly upon his poems.
Background
Charles Fenno Hoffman was born on February 7, 1806 in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Josiah Ogden Hoffman and his second wife, Maria Fenno. As a boy of eleven, he was injured in an accident in which his right leg was so crushed that it had to be amputated above the knee.
Education
At fifteen Hoffman entered Columbia College, where he studied for three years. His academic standing was low, but in spite of his physical handicap he was prominent in student activities. Leaving without graduating, he went to Albany, studied law with Harmanus Bleecker, and at the same time contributed articles to the local papers.
Career
At twenty-one Hoffman was admitted to the New York bar. He continued to be interested in writing, however, and after three years' practice of the law in New York City, during which time he sent anonymous contributions to the columns of the New-York American, he definitely abandoned the law and joined Charles King for a time in the editorship of the American. On January 1, 1833, he accepted the editorship of a new magazine, the Knickerbacker (so spelled to accord with the original Dutch), but he remained as editor only a few months, for in October 1833 he left to tour the northwestern country on horseback. To defray the expenses of his trip, he wrote long letters to the American descriptive of the country and his experiences.
On his return in June 1834, he collected these letters and published them in a two-volume book appearing simultaneously in New York and London, entitled A Winter in the West (1835). In 1835 Hoffman became editor of the American Monthly Magazine, to which in the year 1837 he contributed rambling and incomplete chapters of a romance, "Vanderlyn, or the Fortunes of an Adventurer. " At the close of 1837 he severed his connection with the magazine, and his story came to an untimely end. He had meanwhile, in the spring of 1837, undertaken the editorship of the New-York Mirror, in which appeared several articles under the heading, "Scenes and Sources of the Hudson. " Some of these were later collected for publication in Wild Scenes in the Forest and Prairie.
In 1838 and 1839 Hoffman's literary efforts were mainly concentrated on a novel, Greyslaer: a Romance of the Mohawk, published in 1839. The story was based on the murder in 1828 by Colonel Beauchamp, of Kentucky, of Colonel Sharp, who had seduced Beauchamp's wife before their marriage. Two editions of the novel were exhausted in New York, one in Philadelphia, and one in London, during the first year, and on August 3, 1840, a dramatization of the story began a successful run at the Bowery Theatre in New York.
For three months in 1840 Hoffman became associate editor with Horace Greeley of the New-Yorker, but he was seeking some position which would assure him an adequate and regular income, and on May 6, 1841, he accepted a position as third chief clerk in the office of the surveyor of customs of the Port of New York at a thousand dollars a year.
On January 26, 1843, he became deputy surveyor at an increased salary and remained until July 3, 1844, when his resignation was forced by politics. These positions gave him time for his literary work. In 1842 he collected his verse into a volume, The Vigil of Faith, and Other Poems, four editions of which were exhausted in three years. This was followed in 1844 by The Echo: or Borrowed Notes for Home Circulation, a second volume of poetry, and in 1847 by Love's Calendar, Lays of the Hudson and Other Poems.
Hoffman had been announced, on March 3, 1845, as a member of the editorial staff of the new Evening Gazette. On May 8, 1847, he assumed the editorship of the Literary World. He conducted the latter with marked success but toward the end of 1848 his health failed and in January 1849 he was being treated by a specialist in mental disorders. A few months later he was discharged as cured and accepted appointment as clerk in the consular bureau of the State Department, but before the close of the year 1849 he was again forced to give up his work. Admitted to the state hospital at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he remained there for the rest of his life, "his physical buoyancy not broken down, living amid a great host of illusions; his mind placid, but distraught. "
Personality
Perhaps the best description of Hoffman is that written by Edgar Allan Poe, who said of him: "He is chivalric to a fault, enthusiastic, frank without discourtesy, an ardent admirer of the beautiful, a gentleman of the best school--a gentleman by birth, by education, and by instinct. His manners are graceful and winning in the extreme--quiet, affable, and dignified, yet cordial and dégagés. "