Editor, poet, and novelist, Charles Fenno Hoffman was an active member of the literati in antebellum New York. His first great popular success came with a series of travel "letters" later collected into the book A Winter in the West, by A New Yorker (1835); after this publication his literary life was broad and varied, until a decline was caused by his later mental illness. Although the bulk of his work consists of often anonymous sketches, reviews, and short pieces in journals and newspapers, he also published volumes of travel writing, fiction, and poetry. In addition, he edited a number of influential periodicals, including The New York Literary World.

Hoffman was born 7 February 1806 in New York City. He was the son of Josiah Ogden Hoffman, a noted jurist, and Maria Barnes Hoffman, esteemed by her contemporaries as a "highly intellectual lady." Both sides of his family were socially distinguished...