author
C. Hossfeld
Known today mainly through practical language manuals and dictionaries, this little-documented writer was associated with a long-running series of self-study books for European languages. The surviving record points to a compiler or series editor whose name appears on French, Portuguese, Spanish, and multilingual commercial language guides from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
1 Audiobook
Hossfeld's Spanish Dialogues, and Idiomatic Phrases Indispensible for a Rapid Acquisition of the Spanish Language
by W. N. (William N.) Cornett, C. Hossfeld
About the author
Very little biographical information about C. Hossfeld seems to survive in readily available library and public-domain sources. Instead, the name is best known from older language-learning books and dictionaries that continued to circulate through libraries, reprints, and digitized collections.
Catalog and library records connect C. Hossfeld with works such as Hossfeld's New Practical Method for Learning the French Language, Hossfeld's New Practical Method for Learning the Portuguese Language, Hossfeld's Spanish Dialogues, and multilingual pocket dictionaries and commercial correspondence manuals. Some of these books were prepared with other contributors, including A. P. Huguenet, Frank Thomas, and W. N. Cornett, which suggests that "Hossfeld" may have functioned partly as a series name as well as an author credit.
Because firm personal details could not be confirmed, it is safest to remember C. Hossfeld as a somewhat shadowy figure in the history of practical language instruction: a name attached to accessible, working guides meant to help learners read, speak, and correspond in several major European languages.