Charles Fenno Hoffman (February 7, 1806 – June 7, 1884) was an American author, poet and editor associated with the Knickerbocker Group in New York.[1]
Hoffman was born in New York City on February 7, 1806. He was the son of New York Attorney General Josiah Ogden Hoffman (1766–1837) and his second wife, Maria (née Fenno) Hoffman (1781–1823). His elder half-brother from his father's first marriage to Mary Colden was Ogden Hoffman, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1837 to 1841.[2] When Charles was 11 years old, his leg was crushed by a boating accident and had to be amputated.[1]
Hoffman was admitted to the bar in 1827, but he practiced law only intermittently. In 1833, he led a group of other students in the Eucleian Society in establishing The Knickerbocker magazine, which he edited for the first three issues before passing duties on to Timothy Flint, who then passed them to Lewis Gaylord Clark.[3] In 1835, Hoffman edited The New-York Book of Poetry which first attributed A Visit From St. NicholastoClement Clarke Moore.[4] In 1836, Park Benjamin, Sr. merged his New England Monthly Magazine with the American Monthly and hired Hoffman as editor, though he left to join the New York Mirror a year later.[5]
Hoffman's fame rested chiefly upon his poems, first collected in The Vigil of Faith (1842). Literary critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold that year dedicated twice as much space to Hoffman than any other author in his respected anthology The Poets and Poetry of America.[8] Griswold helped Hoffman publish The Echo, another collection of poetry, in 1844.[9] Hoffman was also popular for his songs, including "Sparkling and Bright" and "Rosalie Clare."
Hoffman remained a successful editor and author throughout the 1840s. He officially began a new role as editor of The Literary World magazine on May 1, 1847.[10] The weekly journal, which also included Evert Augustus Duyckinck and George Long Duyckinck, ceased publication in 1853.[11]
Under the strain of work, he went insane in 1849,[8] supposedly after a servant used his manuscripts to start a fire. He was hospitalized briefly in April 1849 and, after his release, he accepted a position with the Department of State in Washington, D.C. By autumn, however, he was declared permanently insane.[12] He spent the last 30 years of his life in the Harrisburg State Hospital, a state asylum in Pennsylvania. It was in Harrisburg that he was diagnosed with chronic mania, or manic-depressive psychosis.[13]
^ abcPattee, Fred Lewis. The First Century of American Literature: 1770–1870. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966: 493
^DeVito, Carlo. Inventing Santa Claus: The Mystery of Who Really Wrote the Most Celebrated Yuletide Poem of All Time, The Night Before Christmas. Kennebunkport, ME: Cider Mill Press, 2017: 106. ISBN978-1604337358
^Miller, Perry. The Raven and the Whale: Poe, Melville, and the New York Literary Scene. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 (first printed 1956): 203. ISBN0-8018-5750-3
^Callow, James T. Kindred Spirits: Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists, 1807–1855. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1967: 107.
^Barnes, Homer. Charles Fenno Hoffman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1930: 190.
^Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 198. ISBN0-19-503186-5
Cousin, John William (1910), "Hoffman, Charles Fenno", A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource
