Charles Fenno Hoffman

Charles Fenno Hoffman (February 7, 1806 – June 7, 1884) was an American author, poet and editor associated with the Knickerbocker Group in New York.

He was born in New York City on February 7, 1806, the son of New York Attorney General Josiah Ogden Hoffman and Maria (Fenno) Hoffman (1781–1823, daughter of John Fenno). When 11 years old, his leg was crushed by a boating accident and had to be amputated. He attended New York University and Columbia College, and studied law with Harmanus Bleecker. He 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 The Knickerbocker magazine, which he edited for the first three issues before passing duties on to Lewis Gaylord Clark. 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.

Hoffman's first book was A Winter in the Far West (1835), recounting his travels as far west as St. Louis, Missouri. It was followed by Wild Scenes in Forest and Prairie (1837) based on actual experiences in search of health. He wrote a successful novel, Greyslaer (1840), based on the murder of Colonel Solomon P. Sharp by Jereboam O. Beauchamp, known as the Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy—an event that several writers, including Thomas Holley Chivers and William Gilmore Simms, also fictionalized. Hoffman's version, however, had little in common with the true event.

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