ABSTRACT
The son of Josiah Mayer and Taube Gita Hoffenstein, Samuel Goodman Hoffenstein was born in Lithuania on October 8, 1890. When he was four, the family immigrated to the United States, where they settled in Pennsylvania. After attending the public schools of Wilkes-Barre, he entered and received a Ph.B. in 1911 from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He returned to Wilkes-Barre briefly, where he was first principal of the North Main Street School, then a member of the city staff of the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader. His first book, a volume of serious poetry, Life Sings a Song, was published in 1916. From 1923 to 1925, he contributed a column called "The Dome" to the New York Herald Tribune. In another column in the paper, he parodied Burton Rascoe's Daybook; Rascoe was delighted by it and made Hoffenstein a regular contributor to Rascoe's book section in the Herald Tribune.
