ALAN R. HOFFMAN obtained his BA in history from Yale where he studied under Professor Edmund Morgan, before earning a JD at Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Boston for 50 years. An avid reader of early American history, he “discovered” Lafayette in 2002 and spent two years—2003 to 2005—translating Auguste Levasseur’s Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825, the first-hand account of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of America written by his private secretary. This translation was published in 2006 and is in its fourth printing. Hoffman has lectured widely on Lafayette – over 260 talks – and has spoken in each of the 24 states (and Washington DC) which Lafayette visited during the Farewell Tour.
He has written scholarly articles about Lafayette including, “The Marquis de Lafayette in Savannah” (sidebar) in Slavery and Freedom in Savannah (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2014), Leslie M. Harris and Daina Ramey Berry, editors, and “Lafayette’s Anti-Slavery Lament, Revisited,” in the Gazette of the American Friends of Lafayette, No. 96, May 2022, p. 121. Hoffman has also co-produced and was the principal author of virtual travelogues covering Lafayette’s Farewell Tour visits to four states: New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and New Hampshire (with TravelStorysGPS).
Hoffman is an officer of two Lafayette societies: he currently serves as President of the American Friends of Lafayette and President of the Massachusetts Lafayette Society. He is also the editor of The Gazette of The American Friends of Lafayette. He has been designated a scholar in the New Hampshire Humanities Council’s “Humanities to Go” program.