Edgar Allan Poe’s Connection to Charles Fenno Hoffman

by theliterarymaiden

In my introduction to Tales, Sketches, & Poems of Charles Fenno Hoffman, I briefly mention Edgar Allan Poe’s name in connection to Hoffman’s novel, Greyslaer, and Poe’s criticism of it. What may seem like a seemingly insignificant namedrop of a popular author from the 19th century is actually a reference to someone Hoffman would have been quite familiar with.

Some might be interested in knowing that Hoffman and Poe knew each other in person, albeit probably not intimately, as they ran in the same literary circles and attended the same soirées held by the likes of authors including Anne Lynch and Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Hoffman just so happened to be good friends with Rufus Griswold, who was Poe’s literary executor following Poe’s death. Hoffman was also familiar with Poe’s work, having remarked on “The Raven” to Elizabeth Oakes Smith in 1845. In her “Autobiographic Notes” published in the February 1867 issue of Beadle’s Monthly, she recalls,

[The poem] created a deep sensation, not only among the literati, but among ordinary readers. Mr. Hoffman read it to me with much feeling, immediately it appeared [sic]. “It is greater than Poe realizes,” he remarked, as he folded the magazine….”It is despair brooding over wisdom; the bust of Pallas becomes the perch of the Raven” (154).

She presents a slightly different version of this conversation in her private memoir, published by Mary Alice Wyman in 1924:

I have heard Mr. Charles F. Hoffman read “The Raven” in his fine, manly voice. “It is greater than Mr. Poe realizes,” said Mr. Hoffman. “It is despair brooding over wisdom. The bust of Athene becomes the perch of ‘The Raven.’” I have heard no one else so startlingly interpret this solemn oracle (123).

Hoffman’s high praise for Poe’s work was mutually exchanged when Poe discussed Hoffman in his sixth installment of “The Literati of New York City” series, published in the October 1846 issue of Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book. I touched on Poe’s sneering remarks about Hoffman’s Greyslaer in my book’s introduction, but it is worth looking at the kinder comments made by Poe in this article. Although in the review Poe did not spare Hoffman’s novel, he did laud Hoffman as a writer overall, explaining,

His first book, I believe, was a collection (entitled “A Winter in the West”)….This work appeared in 1834, went through several editions, was reprinted in London, was very popular, and deserved its popularity. It conveys the natural enthusiasm of a true idealist, in the proper phrenological sense, of one sensitively alive to beauty in every development. Its scenic descriptions are vivid, because fresh, genuine, unforced….The author writes what he feels and, clearly, because he feels it. The style, as well as that of all Mr. Hoffman’s books, is easy, free from superfluities, and, although abundant in broad phrases, still singularly refined, gentlemanly (157). 

Poe was not one to spare his fellow authors. Coming from the author who was nicknamed “The Tomahawk Man” for his derisive, contemptuous remarks about his contemporaries, these are high praises indeed and may offer a glimpse into Hoffman’s significance as a leading author according to his contemporaries.

Aside from being authors, both Poe and Hoffman were well-known literary editors. However, following the demise of Poe’s Broadway Journal in 1846 and the death of his wife in 1847, Poe abandoned magazine and newspaper endeavors, aside from attempting to raise money for his own journal, The Stylus, and took to lecturing and penning his puzzling work Eureka, which was published in 1848. Hoffman, then editor of the Literary World, published a review of Eureka by an unknown critic, prompting a seething letter from Poe questioning why such a preposterous review should be published in Hoffman’s magazine. Hoffman hadn’t written the review, of course, but Poe’s terse language must have taken Hoffman by slight surprise. Poe’s words weren’t directed at Hoffman, however; in fact, they were directed towards someone Poe had encountered before. Most likely unknown to Hoffman is that Poe had a strong feeling about who had written it: John Henry Hopkins. According to Ian Walker in Edgar Allan Poe: the Critical Heritage, “Hopkins visited Poe at Fordham in April 1848, when they argued about pantheism; on 15 May he informed Poe that he had seen the MS. Of Eureka in Putnam’s office, and warned that he would have to attack it….Poe believed that Hopkins, the ‘Student of Theology’, was the author of this review….” (281-2.) There is no record of Hoffman responding to the criticism. You can read the review here and Poe’s letter to Hoffman here. 

Unfortunately, Hoffman left the Literary World later that year and ended up the following October in the same hospital where Poe died on October 7, 1849. In their October 20, 1849 issue, the Cecil Whig lamented the two poets, writing, “Charles Fenno Hoffman recently left his desk in the State Department on account of indisposition and is now in the Baltimore Hospital, exhibiting worse symptoms of mental aberration than ever before: we hear; we hope incorrectly; that the cause was similar to that which confined poor Edgar Poe a week since to the same institution” (3). How peculiar and curious is it that two writers from the same circles should end up at the same hospital around the same time, albeit for different health-related reasons?

Although research regarding Poe’s relationship with Hoffman is limited, it is evident from what little we do know that Poe generally admired Hoffman’s works and most likely respected him as a person, given the lack of effrontery on Poe’s part, which he was sometimes known for when quarreling with those he didn’t get along with. Likewise, the few remarks Hoffman made about Poe might insinuate either a general respect for Poe or that he minded other affairs that simply didn’t involve Poe. Whatever the case may be, it is my hope that Hoffman’s name be remembered alongside Poe’s. You can follow the link below to read some of Hoffman’s stories and decide for yourself whether Poe’s remarks about Hoffman’s works are substantiated and whether Hoffman’s name deserves to stand next to Poe’s and continue to be passed down in American literary history.

Tales, Sketches, & Poems of Charles Fenno Hoffman: Available here