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Hoffmann, Franz

Entry updated 28 November 2022. Tagged: Author.

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(1814-1882) German editor, translator and author, much of his copious output being designed for children and Young Adult readers. Most of this work is non-fantastic, though the first novella assembled in Der kleine Robinson; Der Blinde Knabe ["The Little Robinson"/"The Blind Boy"] (coll 1850), which plagiarizes Johann David Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson (1812-1813), is a marginal contribution to the Robinsonade. Der Schatz des Inka (1858; trans J Fredk Smith as The Treasure of the Inca 1870) has been listed (inaccurately) as a Lost Race tale; the various protagonists of the tale quarrel fatally over an Incan treasure trove, but no Incans are in view. A further title, translated into English as Climbing the Glacier (1865), may be a version of Keine Rückkehr (1861), in which a hunter on a glacier far up the Matterhorn falls into a crevasse and survives miraculously for several months; the translation may embellish this. Hoffmann's main work of potential sf interest seemed to have been Unter der Erde (1863; trans Miss R H Schively as Under the Earth 1870), though the original German text is the non-fantastic tale of a group of miners trapped Underground and eventually rescued; the English translation may emphasize an old woman's powers of Precognition, the exercise of which saves the miners, but there is little hint of a Lost World even here. [KG/JC]

Franz Friedrich Alexander Hoffmann

born Bernburg, Saxony: 21 February 1814

died Dresden, Germany: 11 July 1882

works

  • Der kleine Robinson; Der Blinde Knabe ["The Little Robinson"/"The Blind Boy"] (Breslau, now Poland: Verlag von Eduard Trewendt, 1850) [two novellas: binding unknown/]
  • Der Schatz des Inka (Stuttgart, now Germany: Schmidt & Spring, 1858) [binding unknown/]
    • The Treasure of the Inca (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Lutheran Publication Society, 1870) [trans by J Fredk Smith of the above: hb/]
  • Keine Rückkehr (Stuttgart, [now] Germany: Schmidt & Spring, 1861) [binding unknown/]
    • Climbing the Glacier (New York: Anson D F Randolph, 1865) [the actual publication date may be 1867: it is not certain that this title is a trans of the above: hb/]
  • Unter der Erde (Stuttgart, [now] Germany: Schmidt & Spring, 1863) [binding unknown/]
    • Under the Earth (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Lutheran Board of Publication, 1870) [trans by Miss R H Schively of the above: in the publisher's The Father-Land Series: hb/]

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