Text: James B. Reece, “Charles Fenno Hoffman,” Poe's Poe and the New York Literati Story, dissertation, 1954 (This material is protected by copyright)

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Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-1884) was born into one of the most distinguished families of New York City. A paternal ancestor had been among the early settlers of New Amsterdam, and his maternal grandfather was John Fenno, founder of the Gazette of the United States. His father, Josiah Hoffman, and his half-brother, Ogden Hoffman, were well known in legal and political circles of the state. After attending schools in New York, Poughkeepsie, and Morristown, New Jersey, Hoffman, in 1821, enrolled in Columbia College. A poor student, he withdrew after two years to begin the study of law in an Albany office. He was admitted to the bar about four years later and for three years maintained an apathetic practice in New York. While in Albany he had begun to contribute to periodicals and now turned to literature as a career. [page 294:]

Before relinquishing his practice he had joined his friend Charles King in editing the New York American, the first of his many editorial associations. In January, 1833, Hoffman became the first editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine (which soon became the Knickerbocker), but ill health forced him to give up the position after three months. In the fall of that year he began an eight-month tour of the West, a journey which took him as far as Chicago and St. Louis. His account of his experiences appeared as a series of letters in the American and, with additions was republished in his first book, A Winter in the West (1835).

In March, 1835, Hoffman accepted the editorship of the American Monthly Magazine, which he conducted until the end of 1837. For a year, beginning in April, 1837, he helped to edit the New York Mirror, and for three months in 1840 he was one of Greeley's associates on the New-Yorker. Also in 1840 he published Greyslaer, a successful novel which was soon adapted for the stage. In May, 1841, he accepted a position in the New York custom house, where he remained until 1844. In 1842 his first volume of poetry, The Vigil of Faith and Other Poems, appeared. In 1845 Hoffman turned once again to editorial labors. His association with the Evening Gazette was briefly interrupted by his editorship of the ephemeral Hewet's Excelsior and New York Illustrated Times (January-February, 1846). For seventeen months, beginning in May, 1847, he edited the Literary World.

Hoffman's active literary career ended early in 1849, when indications of mental instability began to appear. During a brief period of recovery he obtained a position in Washington, [page 295:] D. C., with the State Department. He spent his last thirty-four years in an asylum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Hoffman was the author of Vanderlyn, or the Fortunes of an Adventurer, a novel which he left incomplete in the American Monthly. The manuscript of a projected later novel, The Red Spur of the Ramapo, was burned by a careless servant. Other works include the travel sketches Wild Scenes in the Forest and Prairie (1839) and Love's Calendar, Lays of the Hudson and Other Poems (1847). He edited the New York Book of Poetry (1836) and contributed frequently to periodicals and annuals.

In spite of an accident which, when he was eleven, resulted in the amputation of his right leg, Hoffman led a vigorous life and gained a reputation for his “sporting propensities.”(1) His modesty is attested by his admonition in a letter to John Keese, who was to supply biographical information about him for use in Poets and Poetry of America: “But for God's sake make no flourish — keep the aroma of puff for those whose nostrils it regales.”(2)

The careers of Poe and Hoffman touched infrequently and only superficially, and their relationship suggests an attitude of [page 296:] restraint and deference on the part of both. Though Hoffman was a close friend of Griswold and Clark, he showed no desire to participate in the public defamation of Poe's character. And, on the other hand, it was not until the last year of his life that Poe referred to Hoffman in any other than the terms of general approbation he used in the “Literati” sketch of him. If the two were personally acquainted, their contemporaries appear to have left the fact unrecorded.

It was as editor of the American Monthly Magazine that Hoffman first favorably impressed Poe. In the Southern Literary Messenger he expressed his “highest respect” for the opinions of Hoffman's periodical.(3) Five months later the American Monthly published “Von Jung, the Mystific”(4) (later renamed “Mystification”), Poe's sole contribution to a periodical under Hoffman's editorship. In the “Autography” series in Graham's Poe again commented upon Hoffman's able conduct of the periodical and lukewarmly praised A Winter in the West and Greyslaer as “productions of merit.” His description here of Hoffman as “a gentleman of talent” reveals perhaps more courtesy than admiration.(5) When Poe, a short time later, found occasion to treat of Hoffman as a poet, his tone was favorable but unenthusiastic. The title piece of The Vigil of Faith, and Other Poems, he wrote in his brief [page 297:] notice of that work, “bears the impress of the true spirit upon every line; but appears to be carelessly written.” Other poems in the volume Poe pronounced “more complete and polished,” but he found in them faults of rhythm and rhyme.(6)

Little is known concerning Hoffman's opinion of Poe either as a person or as an author. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, however, told of his reaction to “The Raven”:

The next evening who should call but Mr. Poe. I told him what Mr. Hoffman had said. Poe folded his arms and looked down, saying, “This is a recognition.”(7)

The tone of Hoffman's remarks about Poe in his private correspondence indicates that there was no strong personal attraction between the two. Writing to Griswold on June 12, 1845, Hoffman referred to “the shallow dogmas of the critics of Poedom.”(8) Again to Griswold he wrote on July 11: “The Broadway Journal [page 298:] stopped for a week to let Briggs step ashore with his luggage and they are now getting up steam to drive it ahead under captains Poe & Watson — I think it will soon stop again to land one of these.”(9)

In the “Literati” sketch of Hoffman Poe maintained his attitude of mild praise for Hoffman's works and added a highly complimentary personal description of the man. The “fresh, genuine, unforced” descriptions and the “singularly refined, gentlemanly” style of A Winter in the West won his approval, but he saw little merit in Greyslaer. “The Vigil of Baith” he praised as “one of our most meritorious poems,” but recognized “echoes of [Thomas] Moore” in the “whole tone, air and spirit” of much of Hoffman's verse. He condemned Griswold's “indiscriminate and lavish approbation” of Hoffman's poetry in The Poets and Poetry of America, which, he said, had done the author “irreparable Injury.” Poe's compliments to Hoffman as the original editor of the Knickerbocker were introduced chiefly, one feels, to provide contrast for the hostile reference to Clark.(10)

The Literary World, while under Hoffman's charge, named Poe and Simms as the only Southern authors “whose prose fictions have become part and parcel of our literature”(11) and noticed with cautious approval Poe's lecture on the “Cosmogony of the Universe.” [page 299:] The lecture, the reviewer wrote —

But when Eureka was published, the review it received in the Literary World was flippant and patronizing, the critic objecting especially to the theological implications of the work.(13) Poe suspected, probably correctly, that John Henry Hopkins, Jr., a young seminary student, had written the notice. On September 20 he wrote Hoffman a long letter setting forth the misrepresentations of his critic, apparently in the expectation that his rebuttal would appear in the magazine.(14) It did not appear, however, and no personal reply from Hoffman to Poe is known.(15)

Poe's last comment on Hoffman was his harshest. In the Southern Literary Messenger, April, 1849, after ranking George P. Morris as America's best writer of songs, he wrote that a few of Hoffman's songs have merit, “but they are sad echoes of Moore, [page 300:] and even if this were not so (everybody knows that it is so) they are totally deficient in the real song-essence.”(16) One wonders if Poe, in writing this, recalled Hoffman's unsatisfactory handling of the reply to the critic of Eureka.

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